The Theatre Group is available to all Valley Club members, their spouses, friends and family members. We will be attending Sunday matinees at the Scripps Ranch Theatre, 9783 Avenue of Nations, Alliant International University. Participants are responsible for their own transportation.
Our theatre season is September to June.
Theatre Group leaders: Sharon Greene and Joan Renaud
2016- 2017 Season at the Scripps Ranch Theatre
Vany and Sonia and Masha and Spike
By Christopher Durang
October 2, 2016
Nominated for six Tony Awards(R), “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” is one of the most lauded and beloved Broadway plays of recent years. Vanya and his adopted sister Sonia live a quiet life in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where they grew up, but their peace is disturbed when their movie star sister Masha returns unannounced with her twenty-something boy toy, Spike. A weekend of rivalry, regret, and raucousness begins.
Winner of the 2013 Tony Award(R) for Best Play
Winner of the Outer Circle Critics Award for Best Play
Winner of the Drama League Award for Best Production of a Play
Winner of the Drama Desk Award for Best Play
Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Production
Winner of the Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Play
The Fantasticks
Music by Harvey Schmidt, Lyrics by Tom Jones
December 11, 2016
The 1960 musical with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones, The Fantasticks tells an allegorical story, loosely based on the play The Romancers (Les Romanesques) by Edmond Rostand, concerning two neighboring fathers who trick their children, Luisa and Matt, into falling in love by pretending to feud. The fathers hire traveling actors to stage a mock abduction, so that Matt can heroically seem to save Luisa, ending the supposed feud. When the children discover the deception, they reject the arranged love match and separate. Each then gains disillusioning experiences of the real world, seen in parallel fantasy sequences. They return to each other bruised but enlightened, and they renew their vows with more maturity.
The show’s original off-Broadway production ran a total of 42 years and 17,162 performances, making it the world’s longest-running musical. The musical was produced by Lore Noto. It was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre in 1991. The poetic book and breezy, inventive score, including such familiar songs as “Try to Remember,” helped make this show so durable. Many productions followed, as well as television and film versions. The Fantasticks has also become a staple of regional, community, and high school productions virtually since its premiere, with approximately 250 new productions each year. It is played with a small cast, two- to three-person orchestra and minimalist set design. Among many revivals, the show re-opened off-Broadway in 2006. As of 2010, its original investors have earned 240 times their original investments. The musical has played throughout the U.S. and in at least 67 foreign countries.
Good People
By David Lyndsay-Abaire
February 19, 2017
Welcome to Southie, a Boston neighborhood where a night on the town means a few rounds of bingo, where this month’s paycheck covers last month’s bills, and where Margie Walsh has just been let go from yet another job. Facing eviction and scrambling to catch a break, Margie thinks an old fling who’s made it out of Southie might be her ticket to a fresh new start. But is this apparently self-made man secure enough to face his humble beginnings? Margie is about to risk what little she has left to find out. With his signature humorous glow, Lindsay-Abaire explores the struggles, shifting loyalties and unshakeable hopes that come with having next to nothing in America.
“David Lindsay-Abaire pays his respects to his old South Boston neighborhood with this tough and tender play about the insurmountable class divide between those who make it out of this blue-collar Irish neighborhood and those who find themselves left behind. The scrappy characters have tremendous appeal, and the moral dilemma they grapple with—is it strength of character or just a few lucky breaks that determines a person’s fate?—holds special significance in today’s harsh economic climate.” —Variety.
“Wonderful…this isn’t a manipulative tear-jerker or a simplistic diatribe. GOOD PEOPLE is poignant, brave and almost subversive in its focus on what it really means to be down on your luck.” —NY Post.
Flemming (An American Thriller)
By Sam Bobrick
April 23, 2017
Bored by his privileged, but mundane life, Henry Flemming sells his lucrative brokerage firm to become a detective. On his very first case, and to the horror of his wife, Karen, and his two crazy neighbors, Suzy and Stan, the Flemming living room begins to fill up with dead bodies. Karen is further annoyed when one of them turns out to be her father. Even though Henry keeps showing up at home every day more disheveled and beaten up, he couldn’t be happier. Henry is convinced he’s found his life’s work and Westport, Connecticut is safer for it. A spoof of the film noir thrillers from the 1940’s and 50’s.
Loves and Hours
By Stephen Metcalfe
June 25, 2017
Love. Age. Perspective. The wisdom learned of experience. The innocence and impatience of youth. Thrills. Romance. Movies, wine, antiques and rock and roll. Loves & Hours is the story of Dan Tilney; newly divorced, empty nester, and a man now totally at a loss as to what to do with the rest of his life. His friends know. Dan needs a girl. But will it be Charlotte, beautiful, bursting with life and twenty years his junior? Or will it be Julia; his life long friend and confidant. And what about his teenage son who is having an affair with a neighbor? And his ex-wife who has announced she’s gay? What about his best friend, Harold,—who is going through a mid-life crisis and his daughter, Rebecca, who is seemingly furious with everything and everyone. In this gentle comedy, life and love are complicated for young and not so young alike.