TDW News

The Drama Workshop proudly announces the 2006-2007 season

Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge
by Christopher Durang
Directed by James Burton
November 10-18, 2006
In this departure from Dickens, young Scrooge's exclamations of "Bah, humbug!" are an undiagnosed "kind of seasonal Tourette's Syndrome," and The Ghost of Christmas Past is played by a sassy African-American woman with enough attitude to portray all three spirits (which she does). She tries to show Scrooge his past, present and future in order to change him, but her magic keeps malfunctioning in Durang's version of the beloved holiday classic, and they consistently find themselves transported to the wrong time and place. She tries to take Scrooge back to see his old employers, the Fezziwigs-"always an audience favorite"-but instead she and Scrooge keep appearing in the present at the Cratchit's pathetic home. Mrs. Bob Cratchit, a minor character in the Dickens, takes center stage here. No longer loving and long suffering, Mrs. Bob is in a rage: She's sick of Tiny Tim (the goody-goody crippled child), she hates her twenty other children (most of them confined to the root cellar), including oversized Little Nell, and she wants to get drunk and jump off London Bridge. As the Ghost loses more control, the plot morphs into parodies of Oliver Twist, "The Gift of the Magi" and It's a Wonderful Life. And to make matters worse, Scrooge and Mrs. Bob seem to be kindred souls falling in love. With a dénouement that is two parts Touched by an Angel and one part The Queen of Mean, Scrooge's tale of redemption and gentle grace is placed squarely on its head.

Communicating Doors
by Alan Ayckbourn
Directed by Jef Brown
February 16-24, 2007
This intricate time traveling comic thriller by the British master of farcical comedy delighted London and New York audiences. A London sex specialist from the future stumbles into a murder plot that sends her, compliments of a unique set of hotel doors, traveling back in time. She and two women who were murdered in 1998 and 1978 race back and forth in time trying to rewrite history and prevent their own violent ends. The frantic race begins when Poopay is hired for an evening at the Regal Hotel by an old man who eschews a fling in favor of confessing his role in the demise of his wives. Now a target, Poopay flees into the vestibule and somehow triggers the time machine. "A real knockout.... A vastly entertaining blend of the West End drawing room thriller with one of Priestley's old time plays, where characters go whirling throughout time. Of course, Ayckbourn has added innumerable piquant and bizarre details of his own.... This is a show to see." N.Y. Post. "An inventive diversion." N.Y. Times.

Defying Gravity
by Jane Anderson
Directed by Jeff Groh
May 4-12, 2007
This free structured look at the 1986 Challenger disaster places the teacher who died with six others as they hurtled into space at the center of an exploration of our need to reach beyond ourselves and dare the universe. Defying Gravity artfully interweaves the past with the present and the lives of participants and bystanders, drawing parallels among painter Claude Monet's artistic quest, the zest of the teacher selected to the first civilian astronaut, the perspectives of her grieving daughter, the aspirations of elderly tourists who drive their Winnebago to Florida to watch the space shot and dream of hotels in space, the guilt felt by a NASA mechanic and his girl friend's fear of heights. "[A] clever and uplifting fantasy ... [with] ear catching musings about art, religion and the outer limits of human possibility." N.Y. Times. "A lovely piece.... It floats gracefully in the big blue yonder of the imagination ... letting Anderson's delicate, tender and human attitude toward her characters come through.... One by one they rise out of their earthbound selves ... to look down on the world from a new perspective." N.Y. Daily News.

All performances will be at the newly renovated Westwood Town Hall on the corner of Montana, Harrison and Epworth in the heart of Westwood.

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