Laguna Playhouse completes season with ‘Allergist’s Wife’

Tom Titus

Leave it to the Laguna Playhouse to come up with new and different

plays that the majority of its audience is entirely unacquainted

with.

The current season at the playhouse is replete with unfamiliar

titles, and the lone remaining slot finally has been filled with

another one. It’s Charles Busch’s “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife”

ticketed

for the May 28 to June 26 slot.

Oh, and “Late Nite Catechism” might be around still. It’s

just been extended for a 10th time, through Dec. 16.

Theatergoers on the left coast may not be familiar with the

“Allergist’s Wife,” but the show ran for 777 performances on Broadway

and received a Tony nomination for best play of the season. Busch won

the Outer Circle Critics John Gassner award for the project.

The comedy -- which, according to the New York Times, “earns

wall-to-wall laughs” -- centers on Marjorie Taub, a middle-aged New

York doctor’s wife who’s steeped in cultural pursuits -- museums in

the morning, concerts in the evening. That is, until she’s shaken out

of her lethargy by the reappearance of a fascinating and somewhat

mysterious childhood friend, which leads to a mid-life crisis of

Medea-like proportions,” to quote the show’s promoters.

New York Magazine labeled it “an intelligently funny and

satirically relevant uptown comedy” and the city’s Daily News

trumpeted, “Charles Busch comes of age as a comic playwright of the

first rank.”

Directing “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” will be Joel Bishoff,

who staged the original New York production of the hit Broadway

musical “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” as well as its 1997

production at the Laguna Playhouse.

Playwright Busch is known for his off-the-wall humor in such plays

as “Red Scare on Sunset” and “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.” He wrote

and starred in the film versions of two of his plays, “Psycho Beach

Party” and “Die Mommie, Die,” which garnered him a best performance

award at the Sundance Film Festival.

As for “Late Nite Catechism,” like Old Man River, it just keeps

rolling along at the playhouse, where it began its longevity back in

September of 2003. Laguna audiences have applauded the no-nonsense

nun who rules with a ruler nearly every Monday evening since then.

“Catechism” class will convene, at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 8, 15 and 29 and

in consecutive sessions Dec. 13, 14, 15 and 16. Tickets are $35 and

may be reserved by contacting the box office at (494) 497-2787.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Coastline Pilot.