Mike Nussbaum
These plays, all written by Tony and Pulitzer-winning playwright and Steppenwolf ensemble member Tracy Letts, share at least one thread: a world off-kilter. These gripping pieces create the opening landscape of this season and will mark a bridge between where we have been and where we are going.
Change is in the air as Violet prepares to bring twin boys into the world. Inside her womb, her unborn sons contemplate their future, while the world around her is in transformation: her husband is secretly planning to leave her, her father is slipping into senility and her daughter has taken a vow of silence. Haunting and slyly funny, Smokefall explores the lives of this family in a lyrical treatise on the fragility of life and the power of love.
After a police chase with an otherworldly being, a New York City cop is recruited as an agent in a top-secret organization established to monitor and police alien activity on Earth: the Men in Black. Agent Kay and new recruit Agent Jay find themselves in the middle of a deadly plot by an intergalactic terrorist who has arrived on Earth to assassinate two ambassadors from opposing galaxies.
Ruben and Robby are twin brothers, adopted by Mona, one of the wealthiest - and most eccentric - women in Santa Barbara. Ruben is devoted to Mona, but Robby is more devoted to her money. So when Mona leaves her fortune and estate to Ruben it starts a battle between brothers that soon leads to madness, mayhem, and even attempted murder. On Ruben's side is Lou Perilli an ex-Chicago cop and used car dealer who knows the law - and how to get around it. On Robby's side is ruthless businessman Reed Tyler, who is out to turn a swift profit on Mona's property. Walking a shifty line between them is Eddie Agopian, the family lawyer, who doesn't care which side wins as long as he's on the winner's side. But whether they're stealing big or stealing little, they're all stealing in this hilarious comedy about greed, power... and brotherly love.
In the 1930s, Charles Lang invents an engine that runs using water for fuel. But when he tries to get it patented, he is first offered a ridiculously low amount. When he refuses, he is suddenly several people are pressuring him to sell. The big oil companies don't want the competition. Now he has to try and keep them from getting his idea, and somehow get it published.
Convinced that her husband Norm is being unfaithful, Ann Demski has an affair with family friend Nick. When she realizes that Nick contrived the evidence of Norm's unfaithfulness in order to seduce her, she breaks off the affair. Nick then launches an unrelenting campaign to destroy Ann's life.
The classic comic book characters created by John L. Goldwater are brought to tv in a slightly older version. Here the characters are adults returning to their high school reunion and remembering old times and romances from good old Riverdale High
Ray Kinsella is an Iowa farmer who hears a mysterious voice telling him to turn his cornfield into a baseball diamond. He does, but the voice's directions don't stop -- even after the spirits of deceased ballplayers turn up to play.
Jerry, a misfit Mafia henchman, is assigned the low-level job of keeping an eye on Gino, a shoe repairman fingered by the Mob to confess to a murder he didn't commit. But Gino's mistaken for a Mafia boss, and the two are suddenly catapulted to the highest levels of mobster status. Only friendship will see them through this dangerous adventure alive!
A psychiatrist comes to the aid of a compulsive gambler and is led by a smooth-talking grifter into the shadowy but compelling world of stings, scams, and con men.
Frank Dowling has to solve the mystery of a young man who is obsessed with finding his natural parents.
A married man's one night stand comes back to haunt him when that lover begins to stalk him and his family.
