Featuring critically acclaimed professional actors, Hector Elizondo and Elizabeth Ward Land, The Prisoner of Second Avenue is Neil Simon's classic mad-cap comedy of a married couple trying to survive life in their New York City apartment building after the husband loses his job.
This performance will be done in a dressed-up radio theatre format. You will see microphones on stage and actors with scripts in hand. This combined with live sound effects, costumes, lighting and a basic setting will bring the play to life on stage.
Elizondo plays Mel, a well paid executive with a New York company that suddenly hits the skids and starts to pare the payroll. When Mel gets the axe, his wife Edna, played by Land, takes a job to tide them over until she too is sacked. Mel struggles to adjust to being home day after day in their high rise apartment until his eccentric relatives come to the rescue. No play has ever been peppered with more outrageous one-liners than this one. Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft starred in the 1975 film version. The fabulously funny 2000 LA Theatre Works audio play starred Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason and was nominated for a Grammy in 2001.
Hector Elizondo is a founding member of LA Theatre Works and has appeared in The Crucible, Plaza Suite, Babbitt, McTeague, Mastergate and Fuente Ovenjuna among many others. He won an Obie Award for his portrayal of God in Steambath and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Sly Fox. His film credits include Runaway Bride, Pretty Woman (Golden Globe nomination), The Fan, Frankie and Johnny, Nothing in Common, Getting Even with Dad and Beverly Hills Cop III. A four-time Emmy nominee, he received the Outstanding Supporting Actor award for his portrayal of Dr. Phillip Watters on Chicago Hope and received another Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance opposite Anne Bancroft in "Mrs. Cage" for PBS's American Playhouse.
Elizabeth Ward Land is a Broadway actress who is best known for her role as Marie in the Tony award winning musical The Scarlet Pimpernel. She has also starred in Passion, City of Angels and Chess, as well as in The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber with Michael Crawford and the national tours of Les Miserables, Singin in the Rain, and The Scarlet Pimpernel. For LA Theatre Works, she has performed in Adam's Rib with Anne Heche and Adam Arkin and American Appetites with Keith Carradine. Land's television credits include featured performances on "Crumbs," "The Amanda Show" and "All My Children." She also starred as The Evil Queen in Snow White for Disneyland.
Under the leadership of Producing Director, Susan Albert Loewenberg, LA Theatre Works (LATW) has been the foremost radio theatre company in the United States for two decades. Broadcast in America on NPR and internationally on the BBC, CBC, and Voice of America, as well as on X-M Satellite, LATW has single-handedly brought live theatre into the homes of millions. The company also performs a hugely successful series of live radio theatre presentations each season in Los Angeles. On the road, LATW has given live radio theatre performances in Chicago, Washington, Boston, New York and Austin. An LA Theatre Works performance is immediate, spontaneous, and features a first-rate cast, live sound effects, and a connection to the audience rarely felt in a traditional theatre setting. . .LA Theatre Works has proven to be original, exciting and. . .highly theatrical. . .American Theatre Magazine.
LATW's Audio Theatre Collection includes more than 360 classic and contemporary titles-the largest library of its kind in the world. Much lauded, the LA Theatre Works Audio Theatre Collection is available in over 4,000 libraries and has received awards from the Audio Publishers Association, Writer's Guild of America, American Library Association and many others. Over 2500 high schools nationwide use a number of the recordings and study guides to teach language, literature, history and civics. This program, Alive and Aloud, can be found on the LATW Web site, www.latw.org.
LA Theatre Works will present the live radio theatre production of The Prisoner of Second Avenue on Thursday, March 2, at 7:30 pm in the Rose Lehrman Arts Center theatre. Tickets are $25 for adults and $20 for students and senior citizens. The Box Office phone is 231- ROSE (7673).