Comedy
Lost in Yonkers | ASU Lyric Opera Theatre
Oct. 7-Nov. 13
This memory play by Neil Simon is set in a Yonkers in 1942. Bella, a mentally challenged 35-year-old, is living at home with her mother, stern Grandma Kurnitz. As the play opens, ne’er-do-well son, Eddie, deposits his two young sons on the old lady’s doorstep. He is financially strapped and taking to the road as a salesman. The boys are left to contend with Grandma, with Bella and her secret romance, and with Louie, her brother, a small-time hoodlum in a strange new world called Yonkers.
The Fox on the Fairway | Mesa Encore Theatre
Jan. 6-22
A comedy about golf just in time for the world renowned Phoenix Open – what ideal timing! This zany romp by Ken Ludwig is a tribute to the great English farces of the 1930s and 1940s, as it pulls the rug out from underneath the stuffy denizens of a private country club. Filled with mistaken identities, slamming doors and over-the-top romantic shenanigans, it’s a furiously paced comedy that recalls the Marx Brothers’ classics. A charmingly madcap adventure about love, life and man’s eternal love affair with golf.
3 No Trump |Theatre Works
Jan. 13-29
Local actress Cathy Dresbach has crafted a clever comedy about cards and enduring friendship. Presented as a world premiere, The Ladies of the Club have met every other Thursday to plays cards, chat, eat, drink and laugh. Sometimes they cry, and they laugh some more. They seek answers to life’s great questions: What’s the response to a 2-club opening bid? And why can’t the Phoenix Suns make the playoffs? Who is the evil genius that invented pantyhose? Told with humor and heart, 3 No Trump is the story of ordinary women with an extraordinary devotion to each and the game of bridge.
Storefront Church |Theatre Artists Studio
Feb. 24-March 12
Storefront Church joins Doubt and Defiance to complete Tony, Oscar and Pulitzer winner John Patrick Shanley’s “Church and State” trilogy where, as in all his best works, he calls out authority figures and tests their mettle with moral issues. Set in 2009, the story revolves around Bronx borough president and preacher’s son Donaldo Calderon who’s drawn into a complex financial triangle to save his friends’ home from foreclosure.