SHIRLEY VALENTINE • Dramatic License Productions

Willy Russell's 1986 comedy introduces us to Shirley Valentine, a 42 year old Liverpool housewife who has found herself entrenched in a well-worn rut. At one point she asks, “I used to be Shirley Valentine, who turned me into this?” Over the course of the next couple hours, we become her confidants as she treats us to her story and her efforts to come into her own -- a journey that Shirley, superbly portrayed by Teresa Doggett, compels you to eagerly follow.

While she's making egg n'chips for her husband Joe, Shirley weighs her life as Shirley "Bradshaw", her married name, and wonders how so many of her days have managed to slip by. Her children are grown and out on their own, and with a marriage that can be described as lukewarm at best, she has learned to endure by indulging in generous sips of Riesling and talking to the kitchen wall. She does have her little rebellions though -- Joe is expecting steak that night, but Shirley has decided that a neighboring dog whose owners are vegans would be more appreciative of a nice cut of beef than her dismissive husband. Among stories of the characters she's met in her life, described in vivid detail, we also learn about Jane, her feminist friend who caught her husband in bed with the milkman. Jane invites Shirley for a holiday in Greece, and though Shirley has to work herself up to it, she decides to go, and by this time, we're willing to gleefully help her pack her bags.

BOEING-BOEING • Dramatic License Productions

You know it's a farce when you notice that the set has 6 doors, am I right?  This one, written by French playwright Marc Camoletti debuted in 1960's Paris and the translated version came to the states in 1965.

Bernard (Chad Morris) is a successful American architect living in Paris.  The play opens with Bernard seeing off his fiancée Gloria (Deanna Mazdra), an airline hostess from Texas.  Or trying to see her off.  She's not in a big rush to leave her husband-to-be, but Bernard seems anxious.  See, Bernard has 3 fiancées, all of them airline hostesses, and naturally, they have no idea about the other women.  In addition to Gloria, there's the lusty Italian, Gabriella (Natasha Toro), and the aggressive German, Gretchen (Emily Baker).  He keeps everything straight by flight timetables.  (Silly Bernard…)  He's convinced that keeping up with the flight schedules, he'll be able to juggle his "international harem".  Helping him keep everything running smoothly is his poor maid Berthe (Kim Furlow).  Her value is wrapped up in her ability to remember what the different women like to eat, and to change the pictures in the bedroom whenever they're in town.

DINNER WITH FRIENDS • Dramatic License Productions

As the plays opens, married couple Gabe (Christopher Hickey) and Karen (Michelle Hand) are telling their good friend Beth (Sarah Cannon) all of the details about their latest vacation.  Beth has brought over her kids to play with Gabe and Karen's kids, but her husband Tom (Chad Morris), is out of town on business.  In the middle of lemon almond polenta cake, a visibly shaken Beth tells her friends that Tom has left her.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE • Dramatic License Productions

The first show of DLP's third season is one that I'd never seen before.  Yes, I know -- I'm always late to the party.  According to the posted director's notes, when Tennessee Williams wrote this memory play in 1944, he wanted to make use of "expressionistic" and "unconventional" techniques like "magic lantern slides bearing images".  We call them projections, but still, pretty uncustomary for its day.  Again -- this was my first time seeing this, but Bill Whitaker's sensitive direction seems to take cues from the playwright's intentions with accompanying projections along with musical punctuations throughout.

When the lights come up on the fragile world of the Wingfield family, set in late 1930's St. Louis, Tom (Antonio Rodriguez) sets the stage as our narrator for the play.  We learn that the patriarch of the family abandoned them years ago, and though he never makes an appearance, his portrait hangs over the proceedings and he is often referred to.  Because of his absence, Tom tries to support his mother and sister with a warehouse job at Continental Shoes.  He aspires to be a poet, and his current job is mind-numbing for him, so he spends a lot of his free time at the movies to break out from under the thumb of his own boring life.  His smothering and controlling mother Amanda (Kim Furlow), relies on Tom to keep the family afloat, but the pressure of Tom's confinement is evident from the beginning.  Amanda has a tendency to drift off into these reveries about her fine upbringing, fine prospects, and her "that time I had seventeen gentleman callers" days, and she tries, as best she can, to infuse her kids with that same desire and motivation for a respectable, fulfilling life.  This includes her desperation to find a suitable match for her daughter Laura.  Laura has a bad foot resulting from a bout with pleurosis when she was younger, and a terrible insecurity about herself and an anxious fear of the outside world.  Everyone in this play has a means of breaking away -- Tom goes to the movies, Amanda recollects past glories, and Laura finds her solace in the victrola and her collection of tiny glass animals -- her favorite being her glass unicorn.

DIRTY BLONDE • Dramatic License Productions

A clever look at the bawdy, naughty film star, Mae West, is what's on offer at Dramatic License Productions.  Mae West was a true icon, and a pioneer when she started out in vaudeville.  With her sexually provocative stage shows and salacious one-liners, what she may have lacked as far as talent, she made up for with chutzpah, pushing the envelope of censorship.

This play covers a lot of ground considering it has only 3 actors.  It starts off introducing us to Charlie (John Reidy) and Jo (Kim Furlow).  They're two modern day fanatics who LOVE Mae West, and run into each other in a Brooklyn cemetery at Mae's crypt on August 17, the anniversary of her birth.  Jo is a lonely actress who temps more than she acts, and Charlie is a mild, quiet man who works at the New York Public Library Film Archives.  They strike up a friendship, and the ambiguous relationship between these two Mae West devotees grows during the course of the play.  By the end of it, they both get to "be" Mae West -- in a sense.  There are also scenes involving a young Mae (also Kim Furlow), with the various men of her life (John Reidy and B. Weller).  These follow her beginnings on the vaudeville stage, honing her persona, testing the boundaries of what she could get away with, and taking a few tips from a couple of drag queens -- a hilarious scene that suggests these queens helped give Mae West some finishing touches that solidified the indelible images that come to mind when we hear her name.  There are also scenes that show a young Charlie meeting Mae when he was 17 and she was an aging sexpot in her 80's, still trying to work it for all it was worth.  These scenes were some of the most compelling for me, with a rather sad Mae taking delight in looking at old pictures of herself, and Charlie, completely smitten, and Joe Frisco (B. Weller), a long-time friend of Mae's and hanger-on hoping to get lucky again.  Even into her mature years, she insisted that she looked like a woman of 26.

DRIVING MISS DAISY • Dramatic License Productions

Dramatic License Productions' 2011 season opener is a charming presentation of DRIVING MISS DAISY.  The revival of this play has been enjoying a run in NYC at the John Golden Theatre since October 2010, starring Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones, but will close in April.  Now is a great opportunity to see St. Louis' production that will close sooner than that, but luckily, it's easier to get to Chesterfield than it is to get to NYC.

So, it's become obvious that it's just not safe for Daisy Werthan to drive herself anymore.  Her son Boolie has broken the news to her that whether she likes it or not, she's getting a driver, and Hoke Coleburn is the man for the job.  Both Daisy, a Jewish widow, and Hoke, a folksy black Southerner, are strong, proud personalities.  Daisy is convinced her accident was the car's fault, that LaSalles are better than Packards, and consistently denies claims that she's rich, often referring to her rough days coming up on Forsyth Street.  Hoke is an easy talker who appreciates Jews, and doesn't mind telling you of their virtuous thrift.