survey

 WE WANT YOU TO PICK OUR SEASON!!!

We are enjoying our hiatus over the summer!  But we'll be back in S.A. soon bringing our shows to favorite restaurants such as Orderup, Los Cuco's, El Chaparral and of course our flagship restaurant LITTLE ITALY!  We are very close to selecting our 2009-2010 Dinnerbox Season (Live theatre in local restaurants.)  Before we make our final decisions we wanted to send out a survey to ask you a very important question: 

"What shows do YOU want to see in our Dinnerbox Series in the upcoming year!?"

Here is the list of the plays under consideration & current votes tallied: (updated 6-29-2009)
  • 16% - THE HISTORY OF TEXAS...in one darn easy lesson! by Damian Gillen & The Company
  • 13% - 39 STEPS by Alfred Hitchcock
  • 13% - BAH HUMBUG! A one man Christmas Carol By Damian Gillen
  • 12% - THE BIBLE: The Complete Word of God (abridged)  By The Reduced Shakespeare Company
  • 12% - PLAY IT AGAIN SAM by Woody Allen
  • 12% - THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (Abridged!)  By The Reduced Shakespeare Company 
  • 9% - A Tuna Christmas - by Ed Howard, Joe Sears and Jaston Williams
  • 7% - Intimate Exchanges by Alan Ayckbourn 
  • 6% - OTHER SUGGESTIONS
 
Send us your top four picks (and/or write in your own suggestion) to info@thecompanytheatre.org with SURVEY in the Subject line. 
Guidelines: Our shows must be family-friendly (or at least PG-13), have a small cast and be outrageously funny!!!   For each email response we'll send you a coupon for discounted tickets to our first show of the season!


ABOUT THE SHOWS:
 
THE HISTORY OF TEXAS… In one darn easy lesson!  by Damian Gillen. 
The Company presents an original work, a roller coaster ride through 500 years of History of the lone star state!

Play It Again, Sam by Woody Allen
Allan Felix has this thing about Humphrey Bogart. If only he had some of Bogart's technique... Bookish and insecure with women, Allan's hero, Bogey comes to the rescue, with a fantastic bevy of beauties played out in hilarious fantasy sequences.  Fixed up by friends with gorgeous women, he's so awkward that even Bogey's patience is tried. Allan mostly resembles a disheveled, friendly dog and this is what ultimately charms his best friend's wife, Linda into bed. It's a tough life, making it in the world of beautiful people but if you can't be a hero it helps to have one...

•    "Hilarious...a cheerful romp. Not only are Mr. Allen's jokes and their follow ups, asides and twists audaciously brilliant, but he has a great sense of character." -N.Y. Times
•    "A funny, likeable comedy that has a surprising amount of wistful appeal."- N.Y. Post
The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) - By The Reduced Shakespeare Company
The good book just got better!

It's apocalypse now as the three cultural guerrillas of The Company Theatre set their reductive sites on The Bible. Can bolts of lightning be far behind?  Yes, it's an affectionate, irreverent roller coaster ride from fig leaves to Final Judgment as the boys tackle the great theological questions: Did Adam and Eve have navels? Did Moses really look like Charlton Heston? And why isn't the word "phonetic" spelled the way it sounds?
   
Whether you are Catholic or Atheist, Muslim or Jew, Protestant or Purple People Eater, you will be tickled by The Company’s romp through old time religion. And remember, some one is watching.
•    "It's wacky! It's zany! And a little profaney." Sister MaryAnne Walsh, Arlington Catholic Herald
•    "This is a slick, fast, very funny show... skilled performers with immaculate, sassy American timing." London Sunday Times

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (abridged)
London's Longest Running Comedy!

All 37 Plays in 97 Minutes! An irreverent, fast-paced romp through the Bard's plays, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) was London's longest-running comedy - 10 years at the Criterion Theatre. Praised by the Los Angeles Times as "wildly funny" and by the Montreal Gazette as "the funniest show you are likely to see in your entire lifetime".

Warning!: This show is a high-speed roller-coaster type condensation of all of Shakespeare's plays, and is not recommended for people with heart ailments, bladder problems, inner-ear disorders and/or people inclined to motion sickness. 
•    "Pithier than Python. Irresistible." New York Times
•    "A madcap condensation that features non-stop laughs. Done at a whirlwind pace and with great delight, they are sure to win over even the most skeptical. And there is no doubt that William Shakespeare himself... would approve." Daily Variety
•    "If you like Shakespeare, you'll like this show. If you hate Shakespeare, you'll  love this show!" The Today Show

The  39 Steps
Adaptated by Patrick Barlow
Based on an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon
Based on the novel by John Buchan
The Broadway hit.  Hitchcock meets Monty Python!  4 actors play 150 different characters.
•    WINNER! 2 Tony® and Drama Desk Awards, 2008
•    WINNER! BEST NEW COMEDY Laurence Olivier Award, 2007
•    Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, is Broadway's longest running comedy, playing its 500th performance on Broadway, May 19th, 2009!

Mix a Hitchcock masterpiece with a juicy spy novel, add a dash of Monty Python and you have The 39 Steps, a fast-paced whodunit for anyone who loves the magic of theatre! This 2-time Tony® and Drama Desk Award-winning treat is packed with nonstop laughs, over 150 zany characters (played by a ridiculously talented cast of 4), an on-stage plane crash, handcuffs, missing fingers and some good old-fashioned romance!

In The 39 Steps, a man with a boring life meets a woman with a thick accent who says she's a spy. When he takes her home, she is murdered. Soon, a mysterious organization called "The 39 Steps" is hot on the man's trail in a nationwide manhunt that climaxes in a death-defying finale! A riotous blend of virtuoso performances and wildly inventive stagecraft, The 39 Steps amounts to an unforgettable evening of pure pleasure!

“THEATER AT ITS FINEST… Absurdly enjoyable! This gleefully theatrical riff on Hitchcock's film is fast and frothy, performed by a cast of four that seems like a cast of thousands.” –Ben Brantley, The New York Times
•    “The most entertaining show on Broadway!” –Liz Smith, The New York Post
•    "A wonderful triumph of theatre!" -BBC Radio 4

A Tuna Christmas - by Ed Howard, Joe Sears and Jaston Williams
In this hilarious sequel to Greater Tuna, it's Christmas in the third smallest town in Texas. Radio station OKKK news personalities Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie report on various Yuletide activities, including hot competition in the annual lawn display contest. In other news, voracious Joe Bob Lipsey's production of "A Christmas Carol" is jeopardized by unpaid electric bills. Many colorful Tuna denizens, some you will recognize from Greater Tuna and some appearing here for the first time, join in the holiday fun. A Tuna Christmas is a total delight for all seasons, whether performed by two quick changing comedians as on Broadway or by twenty or more. Production requirements are minimal, making the play suitable for school and community producers as well as large venues. Audiences who have and who have not seen Greater Tuna will enjoy this laugh filled evening.

•    "A hoot!"-NY Times
•    "So funny it could make a racoon laugh affectionately at Davy Crockett.... It's far too good for just Christmas."-NY Post
•    "The hilarity ... never lets up."-Village Voice

Intimate Exchanges by Alan Ayckbourn
There are no less than eight intimate exchanges in this ingenious tour de farce and each has two different endings; you can see Intimate Exchanges sixteen times and not see the same play twice!  And one actor and one actress play all 10 characters. This is Ayckbourn's most unusual look yet at the foibles of middle class living

"There are scores of side splittingly funny lines derived from Mr. Ayckbourn's acute observation of the middle classes at bay, floundering under the pressures of trying to lead, or to be seen leading, respectable lives. The comedy is wry, sardonic and bitter" ~ London Spectator

The Foreigner  by Larry Shue

Winner of two Obie Awards and two Outer Critics Circle Awards as Best New American Play and Best Off-Broadway Production ...

The scene is a fishing lodge in rural Georgia often visited by "Froggy" LeSeuer, a British demolition expert who occasionally runs training sessions at a nearby army base

This time "Froggy" has brought along a friend, a pathologically shy young man named Charlie who is overcome with fear at the thought of making conversation with strangers

So "Froggy," before departing, tells all assembled that Charlie is from an exotic foreign country and speaks no English

Once alone the fun really begins, as Charlie overhears more than he should—the evil plans of a sinister, two-faced minister and his red-neck associate - the fact that the minister's pretty fiancée is pregnant and many other damaging revelations made with the thought that Charlie doesn't understand a word being said

That he does fuels the non-stop hilarity of the play and sets up the wildly funny climax in which things go uproariously awry for the "bad guys," and the "good guys" emerge triumphant

"I laughed start to finish at one comic surprise after another" ~ The New Yorker

 

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