![“≈ [Almost Equal To]” by Jonas Hassen Khemiri](https://citygarage.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Almost-Equal-To-2831.jpg)
How much do you earn? Who do you serve? The new world economics is built on inequality that threatens us all.
This remarkable new work from one of Sweden’s most celebrated novelists and playwrights takes on this issue in highly personal terms: a young man from an immigrant background trying to find his first job; a professor of economics desperately trying to hold onto the one he has; his wife, who nurses fantasies of an ecologically responsible life in the country; a homeless hustler who might be more than he seems; and a young woman who, in the cut-throat world of her office, may or may not be responsible for the death of a rival co-worker. Think economics is strictly for academics?
This play, with its unforgettable moments of funny and brutal honesty about the human cost of a rigged system, will make you think again.
Third Sunday Q&A:
After the 3:00pm performance on Sunday, June 11, please join us for an informal discussion with the cast and crew.
This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Santa Monica Arts Commission.
“Adam & Evie” by Charles L. Mee
March 24 – April 30, 2017
Much of our life is spent coupling, uncoupling, or recoupling. We’re obsessed by love and sex: how to get it, how to keep it, or how to get out of it and try again. In this new work, multiple-award-winning visionary playwright and poet Charles L. Mee looks at love from Adam and Eve to our own rapidly changing times where the possibilities of thwarting yourself in love expand with every new boundary we cross.
Third Sunday Q&A:
After the 3:00pm performance on Sunday, April 9, please join us for an informal discussion with the cast and crew.
This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Santa Monica Arts Commission.
“Grimly Handsome” by Julia Jarcho
A pair of Christmas tree salesmen secretly wreak havoc in NYC. A pair of detectives are bent on catching a serial killer. A young woman finds herself drawn into a cat-and-mouse game and transformed in ways she could never have imagined. Well, maybe she could’ve. Meanwhile, wild animals have been sighted in the vacant lot across the street. Are they dogs? Raccoons? Or something more ferocious?
This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Santa Monica Arts Commission.
“Phoebe Zeitgeist Returns to Earth” by Charles A. Duncombe
September 30—November 13, 2016
A new play inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Blood on the Cat’s Neck
Nudity.
Fourth Weekend Q&A October 23:
After the 3:00pm performance on Sunday, October 23rd, please join us for an informal discussion with the cast and crew. Don’t miss it!
This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Santa Monica Arts Commission.
“right left with heels” by Sebastian Majewski
“Director/choreographer Michel and designer Charles A. Duncombe have created a marvelous evening of theater.”
July 8—August 14, 2016
right left with heels recounts the story of the Holocaust and post-war Poland from the ironic perspective of a pair of high heel shoes that once belonged to Magda Goebbels, wife of Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda. The shoes, who may have inherited her racist point of view, tell their own story: from their manufacture in Auschwitz to their tragic end on the feet of a transvestite murdered by contemporary Polish “patriots.” Magda Goebbel’s wandering shoes provide a poignant and provocative insight into individual guilt and wickedness, and addresses accountability in the face of history from the end of WW II to today’s frightening rise of the new right.
Fourth Weekend Q&A July 31:
There will be a discussion with the cast and creative staff Sunday, July 31 after the 3:00pm performance. Don’t miss it!
LA WEEKLY: GO! (click here to read full review)
Staged by Frédérique Michel with her customary bold and bawdy panache, the production features two female performers, Lindsay Plake and Alexa Yeames, who, dressed in teasing red and black costumes by Josephine Poinsot, cavort provocatively about the stage while saucily recounting a history of loss, pain and terror.
STAGE RAW Recommended/Our Top Ten! (click here to read full review)
…Director/choreographer Michel and designer Charles A. Duncombe have created a marvelous evening of theater. Their style is a distinctive, individual form of dance-theater, using a movement vocabulary that, in the present case, communicates immediately with gestures sometimes like seductive cabaret performance, always with a sense of the pair operating like a single organism — or like female acolytes in a wicked ritual. Those familiar with past productions will recognize common elements of design (hues of red and black in the costumes, vivid graphics as a backdrop) —the elaboration of a singular theater-language…
This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Santa Monica Arts Commission.
“Othello/Desdemona” by Charles A. Duncombe
April 15—May 29, 2016
Othello, in the midst of an identity crisis, examines and rejects his status as a servant of the Venetian State. Hungry for political power, he experiments with the idea of self-identifying as white. Desdemona, a Lolita trapped in a caged bed, is a spoiled brat with a mind of her own and a hunger for fame. She’s still deeply in lust for the lover she’s lost, while he struggles with racism and white privilege. Egged on by Iago, hovering like a punk-rock bird of prey, and a sassy, transgender Emilia, this is a love story that, just as in Shakespeare, is going to end badly.
Nudity.
LA TIMES REVIEW:
Playwright, producer and production designer Charles A. Duncombe doesn’t so much deconstruct the tragedy of a noble Moor undone by manipulated jealousy as turn its interior workings into an irreverent dissertation on the post-millennial landscape… With director Frédérique Michel and her valiant cast maintaining a jagged emotional pull beneath the High Performance austerity, “Othello/Desdemona” isn’t exactly shy about upending expectations… It’s a starkly elegant, international-festival-ready staging, with costumer Josephine Poinsot assisting Duncombe’s trademark red-black-and-white scheme. Throughout, typical City Garage audacity is detectable… “Othello/Desdemona” is undeniably unlike anything else in town.
Read the full LA Times review here!
STAGE RAW REVIEW:
“Somewhat reminiscent of Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead… Director Frederique Michel’s artful staging cleverly takes the familiar characters and pushes them in unusual directions… The production is full of interesting images and psychological underpinnings… [and] possesses a playfulness that’s undeniably appealing… Michel’s trenchant sense of irony — and the intelligence of the underlying thoughts in the piece – keep us intrigued.”
Read the full Stage Raw review here!
Purchase the text!
Available now on Amazon or at the theater!
This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Santa Monica Arts Commission.
“Lear” by Young Jean Lee
“Lee is one of the most vital, rewarding playwrights to arrive on the scene in the past decade.”—Time Out New York
“Lee uses King Lear and some beautifully unconventional additions to flesh out Shakespeare’s themes of loneliness, mortality, and filial responsibility in gratifying and moving depth.” —Variety
February 5—March 13, 2016
The West Coast premiere of this widely-acclaimed recent text. In Lear, experimental playwright Young Jean Lee’s self-described “inaccurate distortion” of the classic, she banishes the title monarch and most of the other male characters to the wings and focuses instead on the younger generation: Lear’s three daughters and Gloucester’s two sons. The absurdist, meta results are irreverent, grotesque, and morally harrowing.
Fifth Sunday Q&A March 6 [PLEASE NOTE DATE CHANGE]:
After the Sunday, March 6 (not Feb. 28, as previously announced) matinee, please join us for an informal discussion with the cast and creative staff of City Garage’s production of Young Jean Lee’s Lear.
LOS ANGELES TIMES REVIEW
In the Los Angeles Times David C. Nichols praised Young Jean Lee’s Lear at City Garage:
“Director Frédérique Michel treats the intermissionless proceedings as a hybrid of Renaissance masque, absurdist romp and college counseling session, and her fine-tuned cast follows suit. Posing and pouncing around producer Charles A. Duncombe’s elemental sets and lighting in Josephine Poinsot’s winking costumes, the group sustains itself through to the post-Pirandello climax, which breaks both tone and third wall. Devotees of its author and this cutting-edge company should flock.”
Read the full LA Times review here!
This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Santa Monica Arts Commission.
Hamletmachine: The Arab Spring
November 13—December 20, 2015
Two Hamlets wander a bizarre, absurd and devastated political landscape from the fall of Communism to the ascendancy of ISIS. Their journey starts as they board the locomotive of the Revolution with mad Uncle Karl at the wheel. Round and round and round they go, at each stop, the bloody disasters of the 20th century, like the stations of the cross for a long-suffering humanity. Thrown from the exploding train, they wander on to meet the ghost of their vengeful father, their Alzheimer’s afflicted mother Gertrude, and finally the fair Ophelia, who has become an Islamic Terrorist.
But that’s only the start of their 21st century adventure through the looking glass. They are hounded by religious fundamentalists, plunged into a digital nightmare of new media, diverted by Ophelia as a stripper, experiment with gender roles, conscripted into a Dolce and Gabbana fashion show, then finally launched headlong into the conflicts and tragedies of the Arab Spring, from which they emerge more dazed, confused, and maddened than ever. “Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown,” intones a grief-stricken Horatio. This way madness lies, indeed. But as they stand in the final snowstorm, facing a bottomless sea, they confront the question with which they began: to be or not to be. What answer do they finally offer?
This is the world premiere of a new version of the seminal work by Heiner Müller that defined post-modern Shakespeare. This jagged, non-linear text breaks open the Hamlet iconography to re-examine the blood-soaked heritage of the 20th century in light of the new reality of Mideast turmoil, global terrorism, and the rise of ISIS.
Fourth Sunday Q&A:
After the Sunday, December 6 matinee, please join us for an informal discussion with the cast and creators of City Garage’s new Hamletmachine.
The Winter of Our Discontent: Shakespeare in the Digital Age
—Fall 2015 to Spring 2016—
November 13, 2015—December 20, 2015
February 5, 2016—March 13, 2016 (6 week, regular run)
April 8, 2016—May 15, 2016
Come and be a part of the exciting adventure at City Garage. Buy a pass now and get all three shows in this series for $60 (Students/Seniors $50). That’s a 20% savings over regular admission prices! Call our Box Office at 310-453-9939 to purchase today (online ticketing and pass purchase coming soon).
This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Santa Monica Arts Commission.
Tartuffe by Moliere: A Reality Show
September 11 – November 1, 2015
City Garage continues its tradition of ribald, contemporary versions of Molière’s classic comedies with a new take on his masterpiece about religious hypocrisy, Tartuffe.
Welcome to the glitzy, gaudy Beverly Hills mansion of the delightfully deluded businessman Orgon Pernelle. He rescues a homeless hustler from the street who pretends to be a pious preacher, but his family sees what he doesn’t see: a masterly con-man. His trophy wife, his rebellious, spoiled children, and his naughty maid all want the cunning pervert to be thrown out. Step by step, the imposter Tartuffe seduces his victim until the man is ready to sign over everything he owns to him—all in the name of purifying himself spiritually! Will Tartuffe get away with it or will the family expose his evil scheme?
Fourth Sunday Q&A:
After the Sunday, October 4 matinee, please join us for an informal discussion with the cast and creators of City Garage’s Tartuffe.
September 11, 2015—November 1, 2015
This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Santa Monica Arts Commission; and the Wells Fargo Foundation.
“The Break of Noon” by Neil LaBute
“[A] smart and striking staging, and from the talents of an astute and talented ensemble…” LA WEEKLY
April 3 – May 17, 2015
Cast: Courtney Clonch, Kristina Drager, Nicole Gerth, Kat Johnston, Katrina Nelson, Alex Pike, George Villas
What if God told you to be a better person but the world wouldn’t allow it?
Such is the dilemma facing Joe Smith, a run-of-the-mill white-collar businessman who survives an office shooting and is subsequently touched by what he believes to be a divine vision. His journey toward personal enlightenment—past greed and lust and the other deadly sins—is, by turns, tense, hilarious, profane, and heartbreaking. Break of Noon explores the narrow path to spiritual fulfillment and how strewn it is with the funny, frantic failings of humankind, while in the process showcasing Neil LaBute at his discomfiting best.“There is no playwright on the planet these days who is writing better than Neil LaBute.” —John Lahr, The New Yorker
“The bad boy of American theater….Dangerous and devastatingly funny.” —Jumana Farouky, Time
Nudity, adult situations.
Fourth Sunday Q&A:
After the Sunday, April 26 matinee, please join us for an informal discussion with the director, producer, and cast of Break of Noon.
LA Weekly
“[A] smart and striking staging, and from the talents of an astute and talented ensemble, with George Villas rendering a terrific performance in the lead role….The [performers]deliver many incisive moments, especially Kristina Drager as the liberated ex-spouse who wants nothing more to do with John and Kat Johnson as his mercenary attorney. Courtney Clonch is also spot on as the smirking TV host who ridicules John on air…In the end, the production turns on Villas’ performance. Wild-eyed and weirded out, his storytelling mesmerizes. You’re right there with him as he discovers the body of a young assistant by the copy machine, her throat slit, and later, on the edge of your seat as the killer ominously approaches, gun in hand, with John having nowhere to run.”
Deborah Klugman, LA Weekly
KCRW
“Neil LaBute is a playwright who likes to get under your skin. Love him or hate him, he’s going to push your buttons, challenge your assumptions. City Garage is tackling his 2011 play The Break of Noon and it’s no exception.”
Anthony Byrnes, KCRW
LA TIMES
In the aftermath of a mass shooting, the sole survivor narrating Neil LaBute’s “The Break of Noon” at City Garage resolves to mend his selfish ways, attributing his escape to divine intervention…Naturally, there’s another shoe to drop — it’s a LaBute play — and Villas’ excellent performance systematically exposes the cracks in Smith’s professed redemption. Bad habits reemerge in his serial encounters with a sleazy lawyer (Kat Johnston), his skeptical ex-wife (Kristina Drager), his tacky mistress (Katrina Nelson), a cynical talk show host (Courtney Clonch), a shooting victim’s daughter (Nicole Gerth) and a suspicious cop (Alex Pike) whose interrogation gives new meaning to “getting in your face” thanks to inventive video projections by Anthony M. Sannazaro….The ensemble provides impressively detailed characterizations…Director Frédérique Michel and designer Charles A. Duncombe attempt a bit of redemption of their own with a stylish visual deconstruction that amplifies the script’s artifice: During the successive encounters, the “on-deck” character perches motionless off to the side.”
Phillip Brandes, Los Angeles Times
This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Santa Monica Arts Commission; and the Wells Fargo Foundation.