Show Summary

THE NEW CENTURY
West Coast Premiere! 
December 3, 2009-January 2, 2010

A big gay comedy by Paul Rudnick.  Directed by Igor Goldin. 

Gratuitous nudity and snappy one-liners!  A Jewish matron, a flamboyant aging homosexual and a Midwestern craftswoman collide in this outrageous and poignant comedy.  "The one-liners fly like rockets in The New Century, the rollicking bill of short plays…Building on time-honored traditions within gay and Jewish humor, Mr. Rudnick turns stereotypes into bullet-deflecting armor and jokes into an inexhaustible supply of ammunition…." – NY Times.  Rudnick is the playwright of Jeffrey, Valhalla and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told.  Goldin directed last summer’s smash hit Yank!  For the first time, the show will run over both the Christmas and New Year weekends.

Creative Team

Igor Goldin

Igor Goldin (Director) is thrilled to be returning to Diversionary after directing last years production of YANK! (Best Musical of 2007-2008 and Outstanding Achievement in Direction of a Musical by StageScene L.A.). Other productions of YANK! (The Gallery Players, NY - GLAAD Award nomination, 2008 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical; New York Musical Theatre Festival – Outstanding New Summer Musical of 2005 by Talkin’ Broadway.) Other credits include: A Little Night Music (Capital Playhouse, Olympia, WA). Love, Incorporated (Midtown International Theatre Festival, NYC - 2008 Award for Outstanding Overall Production of a Musical; Roper Performing Arts Center, Norfolk, VA – Stan Raiff/Virginia Arts Festival, producers). Like You Like It (The Gallery Players, NY; Sam Houston State University/Theatre Under the Stars, Houston, TX). Tell Me formerly The Chocolate Tree (National Alliance for Musical Theatre; The New Jersey Rep; and Actors Cabaret of Eugene, OR). Main-Travelled Roads (The New York Musical Theatre Festival – Richard Rodgers Award staged reading). Unlock’d (The New York Musical Theatre Festival – 2007 NYMF Best In Fest Award, Outstanding New Summer Musical of 2007 by Talkin’ Broadway). Common Grounds (The New York Musical Theatre Festival – 2006 NYMF Award for Excellence In Direction). Regional credits include: Violet, The Spitfire Grill and The Full Monty (The Theatre Barn, NY), The Complete History of America (abridged), Blithe Spirit and Dracula(Barnstormers Theatre, NH). Upcoming: I Love You Because (Barnstormers Theatre, NH) and 2 shows opening Off-Broadway in New York; Love, Incorporated, The Baruch Center, July 2009 and YANK!, The York Theatre Company, February 2010. Igor is a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts and a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. www.igorgoldin.com

Stacey Hardke	Dana Hooley	Phil Johnson	Noah Longton	Jacque Wilke

Press Photos

Pictured (l-r): Jacque Wilke, Phil Johnson and Dana Hooley. Photo credit: Daren Scott	Pictured: Dana Hooley. Photo credit: Daren Scott
Pictured: Phil Johnson. Photo credit: Daren Scott	Pictured: Noah Longton. Photo credit: Daren Scott
Pictured: Jacque Wilke. Photo credit: Daren Scott	Pictured (l-r): Phil Johnson and Stacey Hardke. Photo credit: Daren Scott
Pictured (clockwise bottom left): Noah Longton, Phil Johnson, Stacey Hardke, Dana Hooley and Jacque Wilke. Photo credit: Barron Henzel

Press Release

Big gay comedy by Paul Rudnick, The New Century, next at Diversionary

Diversionary Theatre will produce the West Coast premiere of Paul Rudnick’s big gay comedy, The New Century, as the third show of their 2009-2010 season.  The New Century features the outrageous and poignant stories of a Jewish matron, a flamboyant aging homosexual and a Midwestern craftswoman, and is filled with snappy one-liners and a moment of gratuitous nudity. Diversionary’s production will be directed by Igor Goldin, and feature Phil Johnson, Dana Hooley, Jacque Wilke, Noah Longton and Stacey Hardke.  Goldin directed last summer’s smash hit Yank! The show will run December 3-January 2, including performances over both the Christmas and New Year weekends.

"The one-liners fly like rockets in The New Century, the rollicking bill of short plays…Building on time-honored traditions within gay and Jewish humor, Mr. Rudnick turns stereotypes into bullet-deflecting armor and jokes into an inexhaustible supply of ammunition…." – NY Times. Rudnick is the playwright of Valhalla, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Jeffrey, for which he won an Obie, Outer Critics Circle and the John Gassner Playwrighting Award.  Rudnick also did the screenplays for "Addams Family Values," "Jeffrey" and "In & Out."

The New Century is made up of four one-act plays.  In “Pride and Joy,” Helene, a Long Island matron, is the self-proclaimed "most loving mother of all time" to her three gay children, whom she brags about at the Massapequa chapter of Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, The Transgendered, The Questioning, The Curious, The Creatively Concerned and Others. 

"Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach" features a flamboyant, over-the-hill cable-TV host dishing about gay life, with help from his young "ward," Shane.  Mr. Charles is described by playwright Rudnick as "an aging homosexual hounded out of New York City by younger gay men, who find his theatrical style a threatening throwback to an earlier, tougher time."

Barbara Ellen is a Midwestern craftswoman and competitive cake-decorator in "Crafty,” addressing a local business group about the joys of crafts.  Chipper chatter about toaster cozies and scrapbooking leads to baring her soul and torture over the loss of her son Hank, who died of AIDS in a New York Hospital.

The title short unites Mr. Charles, Helene and Barbara Ellen in a Manhattan maternity ward, a good place to consider the future and bond over their burdens. 

During the run, Diversionary will make their annual Give Change to Make Change fundraising pitch to the audience, who are encouraged to bring coins and bills to throw into the hat that will be passed around.

Director Igor Goldin returns to Diversionary after directing last summer’s production of Yank!  He will direct the upcoming Off-Broadway production of Yank!, scheduled for a February 2010 opening at The York Theatre Company.  He directed all the other productions of Yank! (The Gallery Players, NY - GLAAD Award nomination, 2008 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical; New York Musical Theatre Festival – Outstanding New Summer Musical of 2005 by Talkin’ Broadway.)  Other recent credits include: A Little Night Music (Capital Playhouse, Olympia, WA) and Love, Incorporated (Midtown International Theatre Festival, NYC - 2008 Award for Outstanding Overall Production of a Musical).  Goldin is a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts and a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. www.igorgoldin.com

Diversionary Theatre was started in 1986.  The mission of the theatre is to produce plays with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes that portray characters in their complexity and diversity both historically and contemporarily. 

The New Century previews on December 3 and 4, and opens on Saturday, December 5 and runs through Saturday, January 2.  Performance times are: Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday & Saturday at 8:00pm, Sunday at 2:00 & 7:00pm, various Monday’s at 7:30pm and a Saturday, 4:00pm performance on Christmas and New Year’s weekends.  Single and group tickets are now on sale. Four-show season subscriptions are still available for Diversionary’s 2009-2010 season.  For information, call the Diversionary box office at 619.220.0097 or log on to www.diversionary.org.

- END -

Financial support for Diversionary Theatre is provided in part by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

Wells Fargo and the Gay & Lesbian Times are Season Premiere Sponsors of Diversionary’s 2009-2010 Season.

 

Reviews

San Diego Union-Tribune
Theater review: Brave new 'Century'
By Jim Hebert
Thursday, December 10, 2009

If there’s one point Paul Rudnick makes above all others in “The New Century,” it’s that societal savvy about homosexuality has gone way beyond just “gay.”

Actually, Beyond Gay would make a fitting nickname for Mr. Charles, a central character in Rudnick’s cutting and uproarious quartet of playlets.

Charles, played with comic pizazz by Phil Johnson in Diversionary Theatre’s smartly cast West Coast premiere, is a Palm Beach cable-access host (bowing in the plum time slot of 4 a.m. on alternating Thursdays) who, sexual identity-wise, has all the subtlety of a decorative pink flamingo.

He is the self-proclaimed “gayest man in the universe” — and yet in a time when being gay barely raises an eyebrow, he is also an outcast, literally voted out of New York (or so he claims) for being too mortifyingly flamboyant.

Amid all the wisecracking, Charles’ story gets to the heart of Rudnick’s theme: That in what might be called this bravely “post-gay” new century, persons of non-heterosexuality (to coin a gratingly PC phrase) have become so assimilated that it’s hard to know what being gay even means anymore.

That goes for those outside the community as well, doing their best to grapple with labels far beyond the binary “in” or “out.”

In the first piece, “Pride and Joy,” Dana Hooley fills the merciless heels of Helene, a fiercely outspoken Long Island mom with a trio of grown-up children living nontraditional lifestyles.

She’s speaking to the Massapequa chapter of a support group whose name says it all: PLGBTQCCC&O. (That’s Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, the Transgendered, the Questioning, the Curious, the Creatively Concerned and Others. But you knew that.)

Helene commandeers the forum to talk smack about parents who have, say, a single, unambiguously gay son. She has a lesbian daughter, Leslie; a son, Ronnie, who has become a daughter, Veronica, but who identifies as lesbian and has a cute flight-attendant girlfriend (“Didn’t you take the long way around?,” Helene can’t help but ask); and another son, David, whose fetishes start with leather and S&M and end, well, elsewhere.

Hooley does delicious comic justice to Rudnick’s parade of sharp one-liners; she refers to the scent of Leslie’s apartment as “Jodie Foster No. 5,” and when David appears in his full leather get-up (hood included), Helene gushes, “Isn’t he adorable? He’s like a Coach bag.”

Rudnick pushes the bounds of good taste with Helene’s impersonation of the mother of Chang and Eng, the conjoined Asian brothers who inspired the term “Siamese twins.” But then, Johnson’s character — star of the second segment, “Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach” — pushes every stereotype in the book, too. (The over-the-top tone of the whole enterprise helps Rudnick get away with it; that, and the fact such stereotyping is one of the biggest targets of the playwright’s satire.)

But there’s also a sweetness to “The New Century,” embodied with tart humor by the matchless Jacque Wilke as Barbara Ellen in the third segment, “Crafty.” She’s a Midwestern crafts enthusiast specializing in festive doorknob covers and toaster tuxedos, and whose chief goal is to “create something worth dusting.” As we learn, though, she also has survived a tragedy that ties her to the other characters.

Wilke inhabits her with a beautiful blend of homeyness and heartache, and has just the right feel for Barbara Ellen’s bemused humor. (Here’s hoping Wilke, also memorable in North Coast Rep’s “Don’t Dress for Dinner,” shows up more frequently on local stages.)

The last piece, also titled “The New Century,” ties things together cleverly, if with a hit-and-miss mix of the amusing and the sentimental. It also gives a bit more stage time to Noah Longton (who plays Shane as well as David), and Stacey Hardke (as Joann), who do well given somewhat underwritten roles.

The show has its occasional slack spot, but director Igor Goldin, who staged “Yank!” last year at Diversionary, for the most part comes up with another winner here — a knowing comedy whose straight lines are about as far from straight as can be.

You know him from ...

Paul Rudnick, who wrote “The New Century,” scripted the 1997 film comedy “In & Out,” about a teacher inadvertently outed on national TV by a former student who has just won an Oscar.

The playwright is best-known for the off-Broadway hit “Jeffrey,” directed for both stage and film by Christopher Ashley, now artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse.

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San Diego Reader
By Jeff Smith
December 14, 2009

Neither the playwright nor the Diversionary Theatre production knows how to conclude this otherwise funny play about seeing through stereotypes. Three-fourths of Paul Rudnick's piece is character-driven, stand-up comedy. A trio of eccentrics (if only seen from afar) blister one-liners as they describe lives with much more in common than appears on the surface: Helene, mother of three "non-traditional" children; Mr. Charles, the world's gayest man; and Barbara Ellen, a Midwestern crafts expert/fetishist (who "wears polyester without irony"). Rudnick assembles them for a final scene that, try as he might to will a meaningful result, feels forced. The journey, however, is often a treat. Though some monologues could use more spontaneity (taking out pauses for starters), Dana Hooley, Phil Johnson, and especially Jacque Wilke as Barbara Ellen turn comedy into touching confessions. Though the design elements are minimal, Jennifer Brawn Gittings's costumes are extraordinary, in particular her leopard-spotted final tableau. Worth a try.

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North County Times
THEATER REVIEW: Laughs abound in Diversionary's outrageous 'New Century'
By ANNE MARIE WELSH - For the North County Times
Posted: Wednesday, December 9, 2009 5:00 pm

If you’re looking for a good laugh ---- emphasis on the good ---- then Paul Rudnick’s “The New Century” at Diversionary Theatre is your holiday sure-thing.

The author of previous Diversionary hits “Valhalla” and “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told,” in which Genesis becomes the story of Adam and Steve, Rudnick zings one-liners and adult humor as if his mind were an automatic weapon. Director Igor Goldin delivers a suitably riotous staging of Rudnick's most recent play, its five actors and a doll costumed and coiffed to the comic max.

And who are these five? First off, there’s Helene, a Long Island Jewish matron of a certain age and expensive taste whom we meet at a confessional P.L.G.B.T.Q.C.C.C.&O. meeting. (That stands for Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, the Transgendered, the Questioning, the Curious, the Creatively Concerned and Others.) Somehow this most attentive of mothers has produced children who turn out to be, respectively, lesbian Leslie about to have a baby with Marcia, transgendered Ronnie now Veronica and happily mated to Renee, and dear David enamored of leather-and-feces.

In a 180-degree turnaround from her solemn, moving portrayal of a heartbroken mother in ion theatre’s “Frozen,” actor Dana Hooley zigzags through moods and emotions as Helene with the speed and volatility of fireworks. She’s a stereotype, on the one hand, but a struggling human being on the other, trying to make sense of what life has handed her ---- between shopping trips, that is.

Helene reveals herself in a monologue, followed swiftly by another titled “Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach.” All limp-wristed, pompadoured glory, Mr. Charles addresses us from his perch as host of a 4 a.m. Florida cable TV show. He’s been exiled from contemporary New York for being “too gay.” Phil Johnson (and designer Jennifer Brown Gittings) create a lime-and-coral spectacle of the late-night host, who flounces about reading letters from his few viewers, introducing his boy-man squeeze Shane, and squealing like a girl in a running gag about his own unbridled divadom.

The more he tries not to, the more he insults his viewers ("A gay woman isn’t simply Paul Bunyan with a cat") and gay theater itself, the history of which he reprises in 60 hilarious seconds.

But at Diversionary, the true scene stealer comes in a spot-on performance by Jacque Wilke as the chirpy craftsmaker from Decatur, Barbara Ellen. Wilke made an impressive local debut at North Coast Repertory in the faux-sex farce, “Don’t Dress for Dinner” last season. She’s even better here as a Red America mom whose inventory of hand-made crafts include reindeer sock monkeys she places on IV poles at hospitals, tuxedos for toasters and kitty couture items such as a pink satin strapless gown. Barbara Ellen ---- blonde, bouffant and buoyant ---- tries valiantly, but cannot disguise the pain she still feels from losing her son, first to New York and then to AIDS.

Rudnick manages to be so empathetic to Barbara Ellen and Wilke so adept at conjuring her that she becomes the fulcrum of the play, which otherwise tends toward sketch comedy, even stand-up. Years after her son’s death, Barbara Ellen fusses about with her glue and glitter, still unable to bring herself to use the word “gay” and “son” in the same sentence. Yet the son Rudnick describes is hers all the way, a theatrical costume maker with “such nice friends” ministering to him in the hospital.

And lest you think Barbara Ellen lacks wit herself, she pulls off lines like one comparing the famous travelling AIDS quilt, with its 72,000 squares, to “a cemetery made by Ladies Home Journal.”

Also on hand in lesser roles are Joann, an unhappy single mother whose encounter with Mr. Charles transforms her and colorizes her baby boy, and Shane, that rising cable star mentored by the Palm Beach queen. Stacey Hardke was confident about character and sure in her timing as Joann, Noah Longton less so as Shane.

“The New Century” nearly fizzles in the final scene. Rudnick brings all the characters by happenstance to the New York hospital where Helene’s granddaughter has just been born. There, each wonders what to tell the newborns about the life awaiting them. Sentimentality threatens, cliches result and the comic momentum stalls. “Go shopping; enjoy yourself” is the sort of wisdom that could deflate this light-as-air souffle. But the moment passes and in the end, the show becomes a celebration of difference and the fabulous city of New York that accepts them, one and all.

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EDGE Los Angeles
Entertainment: Theatre

The New Century
by Steve Heyl
EDGE Contributor
Monday Dec 7, 2009

The assortment of cash cow Santas, Scrooges, Grinches, White Christmases and Wonderful Lives that many theater companies drag out this time of year can be entertaining but also can be predictable and usually target a mostly straight Christian family audience. Other companies see this time of year much as the movie industry does - one last chance to produce ’serious’ dramas in an effort to gain critical cachet and hopefully pick up a statuette or two come Spring. So it is refreshing that Diversionary has chosen to present the West Coast premier of a non-holiday-themed comedy, The New Century, for their last show of the year.

The New Century is the latest play from Paul Rudnick, the wit behind films such as Addams Family Values and In & Out. . He is probably most famous for the stage and movie versions of Jeffrey. The Jewish and gay comic sensibilities which pervade his writing is present in quantity in The New Century, but the script doesn’t gel as completely as Jeffrey or Valhalla. Still it’s a fun a ride with just enough poignancy to keep it grounded. Its origins in short play festivals and other such venues is evident from its structure, which consists of three scenes featuring seemingly unrelated characters and fourth scene that brings them all together.

After a most appropriate music cue - Gloria Gaynor’s "I Will Survive", the show opens with Helene (played by Dana Hooley) addressing a meeting of "Parents of LGBTQCCC and Others". She tells stories of her children coming out, sometimes way out, and how she coped in each case. Like all the characters in this show, Helene has many stereotypical qualities. Ms. Hooley appears to have quite a bit of fun playing these up, as when Helene compares her hood-to-boot-in-leather son to a Coach bag and she strokes his arm as if were a purse.

The second scene features Phil Johnson as Mr. Charles, a man who was voted off the island of Manhattan "for being too gay" and now does a late night public access television show in Palm Beach with his boyfriend du jour, Shane (played by Noah Longton in his nothing-hidden Diversionary debut). Mr. Charles claims to speak in "Gay English, you know - she-bonics". Mr. Johnson shows both range and restraint doing Charles’ "history of gay theater in 60 seconds", which is a highlight of the show. Mr. Charles befriends the station receptionist and single mother Joanne (played by Stacey Hardke, also making a Diversionary debut).

After intermission we meet Barbara Ellen (played by Jacque Wilke), craft maven from Illinois. She is a woman proud to show off her tuxedo-themed toaster covers and the oven mitts she made using fabric from artist Christo’s Central Park installation "The Gates", but less forthcoming about her gay son who lived in New York during the worst of the AIDS epidemic. Ms. Wilke brings warmth to the character, though to my ear her speech sounds more Minnesotan than Illinois.

Contrived circumstances bring these characters together for the fourth scene. Here the script falters a bit, with less of the biting humor and insightful revelations that characterize earlier scenes, but not enough to mar the overall show.

After a day of holiday shopping and decorating, sitting through a theatrical evening of Chekovian heaviness or yet another diabetes-inducing Christmas story can be equally daunting prospects. Fortunately Diversionary has given San Diego audiences the theatrical equivalent of the perfect holiday drink in The New Century - bubbly but not frothy, ample but not filling, and basically a lot of fun.

This n That