Salon Readings

HARVESTED

by Donna Kennedy
directed by Evan Bergman

The working-class O’Connell family laughs loudly, loves deeply, and fights ferociously. When one sister struggles with infertility, will her asking one of her sisters to be an egg donor bring the family closer together or tear them irreparably apart?

Location: West End Arts Center, 132 West End Ave, Long Branch

ARE YOU STILL THERE?

By Adam Kraar
Directed by Jill Eikenberry

This seriocomedy tracks the 13-year relationship of two outsiders: Artie — an aging teacher who’s been driven out of his classroom, and Ellie — a spiritually lost young woman desperate for a mentor. Former actor/director Artie reluctantly advises Ellie on her checkered theater career, but the real lessons they learn from each other are the mysteries of friendship, their ache for the families they never had, and why they’re obsessed with the plays of Anton Chekhov.

Location: West End Arts Center, 132 West End Ave, Long Branch

THE SISTERS FRANKENSTEIN
(A Mashup of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters & Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein)

By Robert Caisley

What if Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein performed an organ transplant on Chekhov’s Three Sisters? You might come up with a comedy like this! In a sleepy, provincial Russian backwater, three cultured but eccentric sisters–heirs to their recently deceased father’s estate and his medical journals–live a numbingly mundane life until they decide to build the perfect companion to rescue them from their tedium. Their experiment works at first, forcing each of them to choose between the fantasies they’ve stitched together and a romanticized future in Moscow…or to find real meaning in the lives they’ve inherited.

Location: West End Arts Center, 132 West End Ave, Long Branch

MARY ASTOR’S PURPLE DIARY (The Musical)

Music and Lyrics by Michael Garin
Book by Mardie Millit
Based on the book by Edward Sorel
Directed by Carl Andress

In 1965, author-illustrator Edward Sorel moved into a rent-controlled, Upper East Side apartment. While ripping up the linoleum floor, he found a pile of old newspapers with tabloid headlines, all about the biggest sex scandal of 1936. It involved a post-custody battle between a sexually liberated movie star, Mary (The Maltese Falcon) Astor, and her controlling ex-husband. Her numerous affairs, as detailed in her ‘purple diary’, rattled the entertainment industry, from Hollywood to Broadway. Sorel became obsessed with the subject, resulting in a best-selling, illustrated book. This musical version is a fizzy little cocktail inspired by his book, bubbling over with love, passion, infatuation, and a bit of magic!

Location: West End Arts Center, 132 West End Ave, Long Branch