Goldstar

Considered by many critics to be playwright Neil Simon's best work, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lost in Yonkers is drawn from Simon's own experiences growing up in New York City. This coming of age dramedy tells the story of two teenagers who live with their domineering grandmother during World War II. Learn more...

Long Beach Playhouse presents Side Man. This touching, comic drama won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1999. Spanning over three decades, it's the story of Gene, a jazz trumpet player, and the turmoil his family suffers as a result of his passion for jazz music, seen through the eyes of his only son Clifford. Learn more...

Trevor and Susannah are on the verge of a breakup--and they're determined to take their friends and family down with them. As the evening progresses, this unstable pair travels from bedroom to bedroom, raining hysterical havoc on everything they touch and assuring that no one will sleep. Learn more...

Ken Talley, a Vietnam vet who lost his legs in combat, lives in a farmhouse in rural Missouri with his lover, Jed. Traumatized and bitter, Ken struggles to find meaning in his life. As he contemplates selling the farmhouse, old friends and family members descend for a vacation. Learn more...

Written by comedy legend Steve Martin, Picasso supposes a meeting between two of history's greatest minds, Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, in a Paris cafe in 1904. This absurd, comedic play premiered in 1994 to rave reviews, and has since become a staple of modern American theater. Learn more...

Long Beach Playhouse presents Lynn Nottage's multiple award-winning drama Intimate Apparel. In 1905 Manhattan, an African-American seamstress creates custom lingerie for women of the boudoir and the brothel. She longs to break free and be herself in a society where she cannot quite fit into the set patterns that are stitched for African-American women. Learn more...

Little Women, one of the most widely read novels in the English language, comes to life in a new production at Long Beach Playhouse's Studio Theatre. Louisa May Alcott's cherished story about family life and love traces the adventures of sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy who grow up in trying times during the Civil War. Learn more...

An American classic, this romantic comedy by award-winning playwright William Inge inspired the 1956 film starring Marilyn Monroe. When a raging snowstorm blows into a Kansas town, eight unlikely strangers become stranded overnight in a bus stop diner. Over the course of the night, the eight strangers realize that each has something to learn about life, love and -- most of all -- themselves. Learn more...

How the Other Half Loves is an ingenious comedy that juggles time and space to present the lives and loves, passion and panic of three married couples. Like all of Ayckbourn's comedies, it is about the precise interaction of sex and class in modern English society. Learn more...

Long Beach Playhouse presents Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, a classic farce in which a novelist invites a medium to conduct a séance in his home, hoping to expose her as a fraud. Instead, the medium succeeds in summoning the spirit of the writer's temperamental late first wife, much to the annoyance of his current one. Learn more...

Wait Until Dark is a masterfully constructed thriller about a blind girl, alone in a Greenwich Village apartment, who is stalked by vicious drug smugglers. This tense drama by the author of Dial "M" for Murder moves from one moment of suspense to another, building toward an electrifying finale. Learn more...

When Bunbury learns he's only a fictitious character who never appears in The Importance of Being Earnest, he uses his anonymity to infiltrate and alter classic literature, starting by giving Romeo and Juliet a happy ending. The resulting transformation of A Streetcar Named Desire, Waiting for Godot and other works spawns a new sub-discipline in literary criticism--and may even change the world. Learn more...

Ben and Joanie, in their mid-thirties and married eight years, are an upwardly mobile "yuppie" couple about to become parents for the first time. Little Footsteps is a funny and cautionary examination of the promises--and perils--of impending parenthood. Learn more...

The Long Beach Playhouse presents After Play. The acclaimed playwriting debut of actress Anne Meara, perhaps best known for her work with Jerry Stiller in the comedy duo Stiller and Meara, it concerns two middle-aged couples, Marty and Terry, and Renee and Phil, old friends reuniting after three years, who go to a restaurant after seeing a new Broadway play. Learn more...

The Long Beach Playhouse presents Beth Henley's Pulitzer Prize-winning comic drama Crimes of the Heart, the story of three sisters surviving crisis after crisis in a small Mississippi town. Warm-hearted, irreverent, zany and brilliantly imaginative, the play teems with humanity and humor as it examines the plight of three women betrayed by their passions. Learn more...

After Catherine's father, a famous mathematician, dies, Catherine is left to deal with her own emotions, her estranged sister, and the attentions of a former student of her father's. A burgeoning romance and the discovery of a mysterious notebook draw Catherine into the most difficult problem of all: How much of her father's madness--or genius--will she inherit? Learn more...

Ross Gardiner got more than he bargained for when a judge ordered him to visit the elderly man he hit with his car. He got a friend. Jeff Baron's Visiting Mister Green explores the relationship between two drastically different men. Equally funny and moving, Visiting Mister Green examines friendship, faith and love with two refreshingly realistic characters. Learn more...

It's 1939, and Hollywood producer David O. Selznick has shut down production on the film everyone tells him can't be made, "Gone With the Wind." Desperate but determined, he brings in a new writer and a director to save the big-budget epic. It's a comedic look at how entertainment, power and politics came together to create one of America's legendary films. Learn more...

Tracers is a powerful, unsettling and ultimately devastating account of the Vietnam War, written (and first performed) by men who were there. A composite or collage of interrelated scenes, the play follows the lives of a group of "grunts" as they move from basic training to combat in Vietnam, and finally to the shattering realization that their lives will be forever affected by the horrors that they have experienced. Learn more...

In the last decade of the twentieth century, a beautiful young woman in nineteenth-century clothing is found floating on an iceberg in the middle of the North Atlantic. When rescued, she says only one word: "Titanic." Is she really a survivor of the doomed ship? Learn more...

Suggested by Henry James' novel Washington Square, this play, set in 1850s New York, tells the story of a shy and plain young girl who falls desperately in love with a delightful young fortune hunter. Her lack of worldliness prevents her from realizing that the young man proposing to her is not entirely drawn to her by her charm. Learn more...

The winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play, Driving Miss Daisy is a warm-hearted, humorous and affecting study of the unlikely relationship between an aging, crotchety white Southern lady, and a proud, soft-spoken black man. The play's long run Off-Broadway led to an Academy Award-winning film. Learn more...

Welcome to the world of Luke Yankee, son of Broadway and Hollywood actress Eileen Heckart. In Diva Dish, his one-man show playing at the Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre, he invites you into a world you've only dreamed about - full of showbiz gossip and behind-the-scenes tales of all your favorite celebrities. This multimedia theatrical event includes never-before seen photos of stars like Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Bob Fosse, rare video clips and scores of humorous stories. John Sgueglia, director of Roseanne and Married With Children, directs this production. Learn more...

Long Beach Playhouse presents Ken Ludwig's thriller Postmortem about an eccentric playwright who tries to solve a case a la Sherlock Holmes. This play from the author of Lend Me a Tenor and Sullivan & Gilbert has delighted audiences nationwide. Learn more...

In A.R. Gurney's Sylvia, Greg and Kate have moved to Manhattan after twenty-two years of child raising in the suburbs. Greg's career as a financial trader is winding down, while Kate's career, as a public school English teacher, is beginning to offer her more opportunities. Enter a new young female influence into Greg's' life: Sylvia, a dog he found in the park -- or that has found him. Sylvia becomes a major bone of contention between husband and wife. Learn more...

Long Beach Playhouse presents the world premiere of Quality of Light, winner of the New Works Festival. In the south of France, two lovers, an older woman, and a younger man meet by chance. For two days the mismatched pair share an intensely physical, emotional, and sometimes comical time together, which then leads to revelations that have potentially lethal consequences. Learn more...

This hysterical take-off on famous movie stars who are involved in an Agatha Christie-type murder mystery is a spoof to end all spoofs. The good Sisters of a religious order, Sisters Vivien, Bette, Mae, Gloria and Katherine, are killed off by an unseen hand. And who is the mysterious Mother Paramount? This over-the-top adults only play is a hoot! Learn more...

The worlds of the Mafia and the theatre clash hilariously when a professorial playwright seeks funding for his new play from the family of a former student. The "family" turns out to be Mafia godfathers who will underwrite the play provided that they never have to read it. Madcap murder and menace are served up with plenty of pasta and laughter in this delightful show. Learn more...

Neil Simon pays homage to his early days as a "junior joke smith" on the Sid Caesar Show where each writer tried to top the gags of the other writers. Fast and furious comedy occurs when the gags flow as each writer competes for the attention of their explosive boss! Learn more...

This sassy, wickedly witty British suspense/thriller will boggle your mind with its delicious repartee and enough one-up-manship, twists and turns to satisfy all armchair detectives. Peppered with laughs and surprises, this thrilling, funny whodunit provides enjoyable entertainment for all. Learn more...

Familiar from the film version starring Michael Caine and Julie Water, this play revolves around a painfully funny and passionately serious relationship between Frank, a disillusioned English tutor, and Rita, a 26-year-old hairdresser who thirsts for an education. Learn more...

Rudy Pazinski is only in the 7th grade, but he's already too smart for his own good. Rather than just memorize the catechism, he keeps asking questions -- something which Sister Clarissa doesn't approve of. Over The Tavern is a funny and heartwarming play about a Polish-American family growing up in 1959 working class Buffalo, New York. Learn more...

Based on the book by Mitch Albom, this dramatization of his tribute to his college professor creates a moving portrait of their relationship in which his Mentor's enthusiasm for living is delivered with abandon, even in the face of failing health. A heartwrenchingly lovely play. Learn more...

The Long Beach Playhouse presents Gerald Moon's comic thriller about twin brothers plotting to do each under in: Corpse at the Studio Theatre. Learn more...

Long Beach Playhouse presents William Gibson's beloved play The Miracle Worker. This stirring dramatization of the story of Helen Keller is one of the most successful and warmly admired plays of the modern stage. Learn more...

Long Beach Playhouse presents Wendy Wasserstein's Pulitzer- and Tony Award-Winning comedy The Heidi Chronicles in the Studio Theatre. Learn more...

Clifford Odets's acclaimed play about conflicted boxer Joe is one of the American stage's classic dramas: Golden Boy at the Long Beach Playhouse. Learn more...

Shirley Valentine is an ordinary middle-class housewife who dreams of escaping her unappreciative husband to find romance and adventure in Greece. Willy Russell's comedy Shirley Valentine won multiple Drama Desk, Tony and Olivier Awards. Learn more...

Hattie McDaniel, America's first Black Oscar winner, fought for the role of Mammy in Gone With the Wind, but with fame came personal turmoil. The world premiere of William Blinn's play Hattie explores her historic role in Hollywood through drama and music. Learn more...