TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS • Max & Louie Productions

Based on letters compiled and turned into a best-selling book by author Cheryl Strayed after her 2 year stint as an advice columnist for an online magazine, Tiny Beautiful Things proves a wonderful choice for St. Louis audiences longing to return to live theatre. 

Not long after a freelance writer and mother of two agrees to take over the advice column, “Dear Sugar”, her laptop starts to ding with incoming help seekers of all sorts. Whether it’s the indignity of a youngster being stuck with the uncool kids, or the indecision over trading in one lover for another, Sugar doles out advice that is clear-eyed -- the kind of attentive, candid guidance that can come from a stranger. More than once after hearing a letter, I thought to myself, “Ooo. Wonder how she’s gonna answer that one?” Light-hearted queries are sprinkled in among letters that deal with knottier subjects about love, loss, redemption and forgiveness. It’s these moments where Sugar recalls the mistakes and learned lessons from her own past with honest, relatable connections. These universal connections, elicited by strong performances, are the play’s biggest asset.

GREY GARDENS • Max & Louie Productions

In 1975, a documentary by Albert and David Maysles related the story of two cloistered, interdependent, eccentric residents living in a wealthy East Hampton neighborhood. After years of prosperity, the ocean of money slowed to a trickle for Edith "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale (the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), yet they persevered within the walls of a dilapidated, 28-room mansion named Grey Gardens. Though this once glorious, now filth-ridden estate had become overrun with cats, raccoons, fleas (the filmmakers had to wear flea collars), and had practically no running water, Big and Little Edie remained there, in secluded squalor, for over 50 years. The film won acclaim for its “direct cinema” styled rendering of these two fascinating women, and in 2006, this material was adapted into a musical by Doug Wright (book), Scott Frankel (music) and Michael Korie (lyrics). Max & Louie Productions seems to have gotten all of the right people in all of the right places to make this St. Louis premiere soar.

THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE • Max & Louie Productions

Max & Louie kicks off its fifth season with Frank Marcus’s, “The Killing of Sister George,” a 1965 dark comedy with June Buckridge (Lavonne Byers), at its center. She’s a radio actor with an uncertain future with the BBC and a home life with a lover of seven years whom she’s increasingly afraid of losing.

The “Sister George” of the title is the character June plays on a radio soap -- a sweet and kindly district nurse who zips around on her motorbike, doling out medicines and rustic wisdom to the residents of the fictional town of Applehurst with a happy hymn on her lips. Sister George is a popular character on the show, and so high is June’s association with her radio persona that her friends call her “George.” Off the air though, June smokes cigars, knocks back gin, and shares her West End flat with her lover, Alice “Childie” McNaught (Shannon Nara), in a relationship that bounces from moments of kindness, to bath-water drinking sadomasochism.

CHANCERS • Max & Louie Productions

After a debut in Ireland last year, Max & Louie Productions gives Robert Massey's "Chancers" its US premiere. In it, a married couple are having a rough time making ends meet, and this comedy proves that good jobs go to the young, the rich get richer, and nice guys finish last.

Aiden (Nathan Bush) and Dee (Pamela Reckamp) own Farrell's Quickstop, a convenience store in Kildare, Ireland, but economic times have forced them to rent out their house to make a little money and live out of two back storerooms of the shop. In the opening scene, Dee gets ready for her first job interview in years, and Aiden busies himself setting up the store for customers who won't come. About the only customer they do have is Gertie (Donna Weinsting), the neighborhood nag, who made a ton of money off of a shrewd property deal, and now she visits the Quickstop for her sausage sandwich, to throw her (hilarious) foul-mouthed criticism around, and remind the couple how much their lives suck. When Aiden discovers that Gertie has her hands on a winning lottery ticket, his buddy JP (Jared Sanz-Agero), also suffering from Ireland's economic downturn, advises him that they should get a hold of that ticket by any means necessary. Aiden has serious reservations about JP's ballsy plan, but once Dee signs off on it, after her job prospects dwindle and a bombshell she drops in the second act, an urgency is cleverly added that propels the threesome to consider the boldest of moves.

QUILLS • Max & Louie Productions

Playwright Doug Wright, whose works include "I Am My Own Wife", "Grey Gardens" and "Hands on a Hardbody", offered audiences a fictionalized depiction of the Marquis de Sade's last years in Charenton, an asylum for the insane outside of Paris, in his 1995 debut of "Quills". It's true that Sade -- his name coining the term "sadism", spent over 2 dozen years of his life in prison for literary works deemed too carnal, violent, blasphemous and politically subversive. Wright's play takes Sade's unrelenting creative spirit as inspiration to look deeper into morality and censorship -- all framed inside a salaciously insightful comedy with sharp dialogue, masterfully directed here by Brooke Edwards -- with robust performances and stylish creative contributions.

THE LYONS • Max & Louie Productions

You think you've got a messed up family?  Think again.  Max & Louie Productions closes its 2013 season with a brutally comedic look at one of the most caustic families you're likely to ever meet -- "The Lyons".

The play begins with Ben Lyons (Bobby Miller) lying in a hospital bed dying of cancer while his wife, Rita (Judi Mann), leafs through decorating magazines.  Now that the patriarch of the family is not long for this world, she figures there's no time like the present to think about revamping the living room she's always hated, describing their old sofa as "some washed-out shade of dashed hopes" with a carpet "matted down with resignation".

MRS. MANNERLY • Max & Louie Productions

Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher's two-actor, one-act play was inspired by memories of an etiquette class he took as a child.  You get a taste of that right off the top during the pre-show announcement as Mrs. Mannerly advises us to mind our P’s and Q’s.

The play centers around Jeffrey (Charlie Ingram) reliving his time spent with Helen Anderson Kirk, better known as, "Mrs. Mannerly" (Donna Weinsting) in 1967.  For over thirty years she'd been running her locally acclaimed classes to try and restore some sense of decorum to the young residents of Steubenville, Ohio.  Jeffrey was never the athletic type.  He says that while other kids had play clothes, he had "reading clothes".  He loved "Ironside", "F-Troop" and wanted to be Bert Parks, and he was also innately polite.  He was admitted into Mrs. Mannerly’s manners class and while he may not have been thrilled about it at first, he was hungry for an opportunity to engage in anything where he could excel.  In addition to playing an adult and 10 year old Jeffrey, Ingram also portrays his fellow classmates -- ass-kissing Charles, runny-nosed Ralph, and two female students, Jaime and Kim.  In these classes, held in a second floor gym of the YMCA, Emily Post's etiquette book was the bible, good posture was a must, and any student who said "what" instead of, "I beg your pardon" was fined 25 cents.  The language of the kids does stray off into the profane, especially when imitating their families' typical dinner conversation.  Though she may be devoted to the development of social graces, Mrs. Mannerly also manages to elicit laughter with her unexpectedly salty one-liners.

THE VIOLET HOUR • Max & Louie Productions

"It's that time -- that wonderful New York hour when the evening's about to reward you for that day".  This quote from one of the characters, Denis McCleary, is how he explains the title for his book, and serves as the title for Richard Greenberg's 2003 play, The Violet Hour.

It's 1919, and everything takes place within the tight, messy New York office of John Pace Seavering (Drew Pannebecker), a recent graduate and fledgling publisher, and his loyal but overwrought assistant, Gidger (Antonio Rodriguez).

THE NEW CENTURY • Max & Louie Productions

Paul Rudnick's 2007 play is made up of vignettes, primarily featuring monologues by its main characters who all have one thing in common -- they are, or have been affected by, someone gay.  This set-up could potentially present as a virtual pride parade of stereotypical characters.  Well, it kinda does.  In between the ready-made laughs, and there are many, you can spot moments of introspection from certain characters, but those delicate strokes are often layered over with the script's heavier-handed brush strokes of over-the-top clichés.

The festivities begin with Helene Nadler (Stellie Siteman), self-proclaimed "most loving mother of all time".  Why?  Well, she's got a lesbian daughter, actually two, except one is transgender.  Then there's her son David, also gay, with fetishes for leather and scatology <-- don't ask.  That's why I made it a link.  In a presentation she's giving to the “Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, the Transgendered, the Questioning, the Curious, the Creatively Concerned and Others” group, she fiercely defends her love for her children, but you can tell that despite her claims of being the most accepting mother in the world, she's really trying to convince herself that her children are truly okay.  Stellie Siteman plays up Helene's enthusiasm, but the over-long narrative loses steam near the end.  It also gets a little bizarre as she trots out her son, fully clad in leather, to show how submissive and obedient he is.  Whaa?

THRILL ME: THE LEOPOLD AND LOEB STORY • Max & Louie Productions

Let me just start off by saying, there is some interesting pre-show chatter that goes on sometimes.  "My cousin's uncle got him out of jail".  "Yeah, and the prosecuting attorney was my aunt's brother-in-law".  This was the kind of small talk going on before Max & Louie's opening night performance of Stephen Dolginoff's THRILL ME:  THE LEOPOLD AND LOEB STORY.  This musical is based on the true story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, "thrill killers" who were sentenced to life plus 99 years for the murder of a young boy.  With songs like "Nothing Like a Fire", "Way Too Far" and "Ransom Note", the dark nature of this "crime of the century" seems unlikely material for a musical, but as director Brooke Edwards points out in her notes, this show concentrates less on the crimes and more on the relationship between these two young well-to-do law students from Chicago.

THE LADY WITH ALL THE ANSWERS • Max & Louie Productions

Esther Pauline "Eppie" Lederer, better know as Ann Landers, took over the Chicago Sun-Times's 'Ask Ann Landers' column in 1955 after the death of its creator, Ruth Crowley.  During the next 47 years, readers across the country wrote to Ann with questions about everything from sex and marriage, to how to properly hang toilet paper.  Questions you may not feel comfortable discussing with your priest, friends, or even your spouse could be shared with Ann Landers.  Lederer also weighed in on the more complex issues of the day, including politics, abortion and homosexuality.  She became a media celebrity, yet still answered every letter herself, as long as it had a return address, and her column was enjoyed by millions along with their morning cup of coffee.  This 2006 one-woman show, written by David Rambo, and fluently directed by Sydnie Grosberg Ronga, is set in 1975 and was based on Lederer's letters and life stories.