Palo Alto Players 2012-2013 season:
For the Thrill of It!
5 Great Plays and Musicals waiting for you at the Lucie Stern Theater
A musical this much fun should be against the law
LEGALLY BLONDE
Book by Heather Hach
Music and Lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin
Based on the novel by Amanda Brown and the MGM motion picture
OMG! Star sorority sister and fashionista extraordinaire, Elle Woods, gets dumped by her long-time boyfriend Warner because she isn’t “serious” enough for his political ambitions. Rather than hit the bar, she decides to take the bar as the best way to prove him wrong and win him back. So, Elle puts down the credit card, packs up her chihuahua Bruiser, and goes where no Delta Nu has gone before—Harvard Law School. She discovers the smart, capable woman she was meant to be and the audience reaches its only possible verdict: this is irresistible fun in the first degree!
September 8—23, 2012, preview September 7
“Infectious…good looking, high energy and hilarious!” — Variety
The best-loved American comedy for all time
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU
By Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman
Remember when things could go haywire and still work out? Well, meet the Kirby and Vanderhof families—one materialistic and conservative, the other bohemian and eccentric. Their opposing worldviews comically collide head-on after Tony and Alice fall in love and his parents come to dinner to meet her family…on the wrong night. This Pulitzer Prize winning romp has as much to say today about “living your dreams” as it did when we last presented it in 1943—proof that classic American comedies (like the companies which produced them) only get better with age.
November 3-18, 2012, preview November 2
“A spontaneous piece of hilarity…written with a dash of affection!” — The New York Times
An amazing look at how we love and how we cope
LOOKING FOR NORMAL
By Jane Anderson
Roy and Irma live an ordinary life in the heartland of the Midwest with all the standard deviations of any couple married 25 years with two teenage children. There are few surprises. Except one. Roy is about to confess to their pastor that he is ready for a change. A sex change. This bombshell sets off a wild ride of complex and mixed emotions for the whole family–especially for Irma. This humor-filled, beautifully-drawn story tests the limits of familial devotion to reveal something simple, age-old and unsurprising: true love is never just skin deep.
January 19-February 3, 2013, preview January 18
“Full of wit and wisdom…a real audience pleaser!” — The Hollywood Reporter
Stunning war-torn love in breathtaking spectacle
MISS SAIGON
Music by Claude-Michel Schonberg
Lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr. and Alain Boublil
By the creators of Les Miserables, this modern musical masterpiece transports the emotional power of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly to the final days of the Vietnam War. Uncompromising and thrilling, Miss Saigon is the tale of an American G.I. and a Vietnamese bar girl who fall in love in 1975 only to be separated in the chaos of the fall of Saigon. Despite years struggling to find one another, their lives unfold apart—he, state-side married to another, and she, with the child he never knew he had—until paths once again cross in a stunning, unforgettable finale.
April 27-May 12, 2013, preview April 26
“A triumphantly vibrant, courageous work of musical theater!” — Chicago Tribune
A season finale to take you up, up, and away
BOEING BOEING
By Marc Camoletti
Translated by Beverley Cross and Francis Evans
Be sure all seatbelts are fastened when this 2008 Tony Award-winner takes off on a nonstop flight of pure pleasure. Bernard, an American in Paris, with an apartment conveniently located near Orly airport, is a magnet for all the stewardesses who fly through. In fact, three of them are his fiancée—one Italian, one German, one American. Bernard has no trouble making his connections thanks to never-overlapping “layovers” until that one day when his cleverly scheduled life hits a little unexpected turbulence and the mile-high laughs start to stack up.
June 15-30, 2013, preview June 14
“Deliriously funny…refuses to come down to earth!” — Associated Press
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For the Thrill of It!
