The decade of the 2020s started with ACT being dark for the entire 2020 mainstage season. While closed
for the pandemic, there was a change in leadership as Anita Shah moved in as Managing Director. The
first play after the pandemic closure was Hotter Than Egypt, written by Core Company member Yussef el Guindi
- a world premiere.
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1992
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Trust (1992)
Six hip young singles look for romance in a city's bars, cafes and their own hearts in this steamy new comedy about love and lust, and learning to tell the difference between the two. From the author of Halcyon Days.
Shadowlands (1992)
A Contemporary Theatre is proud to present the West Coast premiere of Shadowlands, William Nicholson's moving play about the love affair between C. S. Lewis and the American poet Joy Davidman.
Shadowlands follows the story of the Oxford lecturer, confirmed bachelor and celebrated author (The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe) as he encounters Joy Davidman, a trans-Atlantic admirer whose frequent letters have intrigued him. A friendship develops, and soon thereafter a "technical" marriage is arranged in order to give her British citizenship. Having given lectures all his life on love and suffering but never having experienced it himself, Lewis is thrown into an emotional turmoil when Joy is stricken with cancer. Their ensuing relationship causes him to question his previously unshakeable Christian faith and confront the true nature of his passionate love.
The Revengers' Comedies (Parts I and II) (1992)
Previews begin July 9 ACT is proud to present the American premiere of The Revengers' Comedies, a fiendishly clever two-part comic thriller by England's foremost living playwright. The creator of over 40 plays, Ayckbourn is best known to ACT audiences for Woman in Mind, A Chorus of Disapproval, Absurd Person Singular and Relatively Speaking.
Ayckbourn borrows from Alfred Hitchcock's classic film, Strangers on a Train, to set this wickedly funny plot in motion. Two desperate people meet on a bridge and accidentally save each other's lives. Karen is young, wealthy and dramatic, in contrast to Henry, a lethargic man in mid-life crisis, abandoned by his unfaithful wife and fired by an equally disloyal employer. One convinces the other that the only reason to go on living is to wreak havoc on the people who drove them to despair. In order to avoid detection, they swap revenges. Karen, with no marketable skills whatsoever, blazes her way into Henry's corporate lifestyle, while Henry copes with the eccentrics on a country estate and the unknowing victim of Karen's wrath.
The resulting chaos, suspense and laughter spill over into two performances.
Eleemosynary (1992)
ACT is proud to present Eleemosynary, a quirky and magical play whose title means "charitable." It focuses on the delicate relationships between three remarkable women: Dorothea, an eccentric and independent grandmother; Artie, a scientist in search of a normal life; and Echo, the exceptional grandchild and spelling bee champion who thrives under Dorothea's imaginative care. The play moves gracefully through a dream-like collection of their hopes and memories as they try to build a life together after years of estrangement.
Written by the author of A Walk in the Woods (produced at ACT in 1989), Eleemosynary was called "A small gem... an elegantly simple and achingly complex comedy" by The Washington Times.
Sunsets and Glories (1992)
Hot on the heels of the riotously funny Red Noses comes an epic new comedy by Peter Barnes. Set in 13th-century Italy, Sunsets and Glories resurrects the story of Pope Celestine V, who wreaks havoc on Catholicism by re-introducing virtue and decency to the papacy. Under an onslaught of goodness, the unscrupulous Cardinal Gaetani must find a way to save the Church from righteous ruin. This savagely comic morality play introduces a gallery of Machiavellian pontiffs, political buffoons and randy clerics in a dark, vaudevillian romp through Vatican history.
