Portland Center Stage

Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps
February 23 to March 21, 2010
Gerding Theater at the Armory
Tickets

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Whodunit meets hilarious in this recklessly theatrical riff on Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic 1935 masterpiece which in turn was based on John Buchan’s spy genre classic. In it a handsome hero (complete with stiff-upperlip, pencil moustache and British gung-ho attitude) encounters dastardly murders, double-crossing secret agents, and, of course, devastatingly beautiful women, all while trying to escape from an accidental entanglement with a deadly group of spies. A quick witted and acrobatic troupe of four actors will create dozens of locations and over 130 roles in this rollicking evening of winking wisecracks and wow-inducing stage wizardry. .

The Receptionist
January 26 to March 21, 2010
Ellyn Bye Studio at Portland Center Stage
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“Not only is this play the beneficiary of stellar acting and direction, it’s also another deceptively mordant comedy. You might nickname this one ‘Torturously funny.’” — Marty Hughley, The Oregonian

Beverly the receptionist is definitely a woman in charge—she’s the first in the door, she makes the coffee, she has all the pens. Her co-workers … not so much. Beverly holds their lives and schedules together Mr. Dart from the central office arrives unexpectedly and Beverly is left wondering just what sort of company she works for and what her role really is. This darkly comic exploration of a seemingly mundane environment, the office, reunites director Rose Riordan and playwright Adam Bock, author of The Thugs, produced at PCS in 2007. The Receptionist was the hit of Portland’s fringe scene at CoHo Theater in the fall of 2008, and PCS is thrilled to present this stellar work to an even larger audience.

The Chosen
April 6 to May 2, 2010
Gerding Theater at the Armory
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This award-winning adaptation from the award-winning novel is the coming-of-age story of two boys growing up in two very different Jewish communities — “five blocks and a world apart” — in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the 1940s. In it, Danny, the brilliant and curious son of a Hasidic rabbi, struggles with his longing to know more of the world and his father’s unwillingness to speak to him when they are not studying the Torah. After a heated fight at a baseball game, Danny befriends Reuven, an Orthodox Jew from a nearby neighborhood who becomes a friend and a partner in investigating both their shared Jewish heritage and their wildly divergent family environments and hopes for the future. When Danny’s father prohibits him from speaking to Reuven because of a political disagreement about the nascent Israeli state, both boys learn that the bonds of religion, friendship and community are both more brittle and more binding than they could have possibly imagined.

Mike’s Incredible Indian Adventure
April 20 to June 13, 2010
Ellyn Bye Studio
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“Bollywood meets Waiting for Guffman.” — Backstage West

“A feat of brilliance.” — LA Weekly

Mike directs a Neil Simon play in India. Life crisis ensues. In 1999 Mike Schlitt accepted an offer to direct Neil Simon’s They’re Playing Our Song on a four-city tour across India. The sheer incongruity of it all — Mahatma Gandhi and “Doc” Simon singing and dancing their way through the Great Sub-Continent — was just too tantalizing to resist. Mike took the job, brought along a filmmaker to document the experience, and soon found himself in the throws of a devastating life crisis the likes of which he is still struggling to claw his way out of. Mike’s Incredible Indian Adventure is an epic tale of clashing cultures and gastric distress. It’s a play about a film about a play, chronicling an artist’s wrong turn off the road to success and the strange, surreal and terrifying journey to find his way back.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
May 25 to June 27, 2010
Gerding Theater at the Armory
Tickets

Six kids face off in the battle of their lives. The competition is intense. The words are outrageous. Let the spelling (and the singing) begin! Three adults adjudicate the proceedings: a nostalgic former spelling bee winner, a mildly insane Vice Principal and The Official Comfort Counselor completing his community service to the State of New York. Both tender and sardonic, this hilarious Tony Award-winning musical of overachievers’ angst brings you inside the spelling championship to end them all. From the author of Falsettos and A New Brain.