L.A. Theatre Works

Featuring world-premiere plays from the BBC and Radio New Zealand.

Part I Roaring Trade by Steve Thompson

This is McSorley’s, second largest bank in the square mile. Half our traders break the million pound barrier. Just how far are you prepared to go?”

Described by The Times as “the liveliest satire on the City since Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money 20 years ago”, this witty and candid play looks at the personal and professional relationships between traders - and how rivalry in the city can spiral out of hand.

Starring: Rhys Thomas (Bellamy’s Kingdom, Beyond the Pole); Danny Webb (Land Girls); Claudie Blakley (Larkrise to Candleford); Annabelle Apsion (Shameless). With Joseph Kl

Part II The Big Melt by Stuart Hoar

The Big Melt is a comedic play about the times in which we live and how we might try to deal with such big narratives as global warming and financial meltdowns on a day to day level.

Playwright Stuart Hoar says: “I think the play ends optimistically in that having eaten some freegan food (admittedly only once), I do know that — even if things get very bad — as long as there are supermarket waste bins there is no need to despair. Yet.”

Directed by Duncan Smith With music by Daniel Beban and Isaac Smith Engineered by Phil Benge

CAST: Jeffrey Thomas, Ginnette McDonald, Simon Ferry, Gavin Rutherford, Ete Etuati, and Kate Prior.oska and Jack O’Connor.

Cast: Roy Dotrice, Paxton Whitehead, Martin Jarvis, and Simon Templeman, with Jane Carr, Gregory Cooke, Kenneth Danziger, Jennifer Dundas Lowe, and Douglas Weston. Directed by Rosalind Ayres

George Bernard Shaw was one of the greatest and most controversial playwrights of the twentieth century. Shaw was never shy on social issues, and over the course of more than sixty plays, he advocated for human rights, women’s suffrage, socialized medicine, and the betterment of the working class. But if Shaw’s plays could be didactic, they were also wickedly funny, and his well-aimed satire continues to resonate in the present day, including our story this week, The Doctor’s Dilemma. Written in 1906, the play raises a question that’s relevant in any era: In a society where proper medical care is a privilege, not a right, how do we decide who deserves treatment and who does not?

Cast: Larry Cox, Jeannie Elias, Robin Gammell, Jon Matthews, Phillip Mershon, Danny Mora, Wolf Muser, Lisa Jane Persky, John Vickery, Tom Virtue, Ron West

In 1943, something strange is going on in the New Mexican desert. By night, the starkly beautiful canyons of Los Alamos fill with the sound of exploding graphite - and by day, the crackle of scientific brainpower. Fifty years after Hiroshima, Atomic Bombers takes us into those secretive canyons to meet the cadre of brilliant scientists who worked there. The broadcast includes an interview with Dr. Robert F. Christy, a theoretical physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project.

Cast: Maddie Corman, Kurt Deutsch, David Dukes, George Gaynes, Chuma Hunter-Gault, Judith Ivey, Matt McGrath, Kurtwood Smith

A well-meaning American diplomat in South Africa tries to pacify his ferociously combative wife and anti-apartheid activist son by being reassigned to The Hague. But peace is hard to come by and, at an elegant New Year’s Eve party, a harrowing betrayal is revealed. Judith Ivey recreates her acclaimed performance from the Lincoln Center production in this masterful drama from the author of “The Substance of Fire.”

Cast: Anne Heche, Robert Foxworth, Jeremy Sisto, Kaitlin Hopkins

The science of genetics explains how you inherit eye color, the shape of your hairline, or even the ability to roll your tongue. But can science explain the inheritance of other traits, like your father’s ear for music, or your mother’s “green thumb”? And, in a more extreme case, can a parent pass along a trait for genius that’s paired with a debilitating mental illness? That’s the question tormenting a young woman in our story, Proof, by David Auburn. The broadcast includes an interview with Steven Strogatz, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University and author of a weekly column on mathematics for the New York Times. Plus, we’ll speak with Dr. Carrie Bearden of UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences.

The great French playwright Moliere wrote often about jealousy and its disastrous effect on our relationships. Of his so-called jealousy plays, few were as widely-performed in Moliere’s lifetime as The School for Husbands. Brian Bedford stars as Sganarelle, the pompous, controlling guardian of his young ward, Isabelle. Sganarelle has raised Isabelle to be his perfect and obedient wife. But when Isabelle falls for the dashing young Valere, she must find a way to turn Sganarelle into an unwitting foil for her true love. Translated by Richard Wilbur. Starring Brian Bedford as Sganarelle, with Emily Bergl, Dakin Matthews, Juliet Mills, Christopher Neame, Lloyd Owen, Alan Shearman, Rhashan Stone, and Olivia Williams. Directed by Rosalind Ayres. Original music by Laura Karpman for Art Farm West.

Jealous husbands, clever wives, and double-dealings: they’ve been a staple of comedies from the Greeks to the present day. And of all the comic playwrights in history, few have been as influential and controversial as Moliere. Two of his greatest works, Tartuffe and The School for Wives, were the subjects of considerable scandal in their time. Prior to those plays, Moliere cut his teeth on a series of shorter comedies about the frailties of the human condition, including The School for Husbands and our story this week: The Imaginary Cuckold. Brian Bedford stars in this quick-witted farce about marital insecurity and infidelity in the French countryside. Includes interviews with star Brian Bedford and translator Richard Wilbur. The Imaginary Cuckold by Moliere. Translated by Richard Wilbur. Starring Brian Bedford as Sganarelle, with Dakin Matthews, Christopher Neame, Moira Quirk, Darren Richardson, Carolyn Seymour, Alan Shearman, and Joane Whalley. Directed by Rosalind Ayres. Original music by Laura Karpman for Art Farm West.