Jus’ got home from Illinois. Got to Sit Down and Take a Rest on the Porch

The inaugural production of Theater 22, THE 5TH OF JULY by Lanford Wilson, opened at West of Lenin October 4th. Taking place in 1977, that is to say, after the end of the Vietnam War, but before the Reagan years brought prosperity to the baby-boomers, 5TH OF JULY deals with the baby-boomer’s adjustment to adult life, marking the symbolically definitive end of the 60’s. The focus of the adjustment was letting go of the effects of Vietnam, both for the wounded soldiers and those who protested the war.

How to Build Bombs and Influence People

Is actually the subtitle of the play Soft Click of a Switch; however, that title is somewhat misleading. Although building and detonating bombs does come into it, the play is actually about how alienated ineffectual males turn to violent destruction to regain a sense of purpose, albeit skewered, and feel that they have a place in the world.

Tom Lehrer decided that political satire was obsolete when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Prize…..for Peace.

Hit and Run Theatre opened Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, a Musical Review of Tom Lehrer’s songs, directed by Arne Zaslove with Musical Direction by John Engerman at West of Lenin Theatre in Fremont, on Thursday night.

A mathematician by training, Tom Lehrer was a songwriter who specialized in extremely risque social and political satire, from the late 40’s to the early‘60’s, when the definition of risqué was completely different from what it is now.