Judy Montagu spent her late teenage years and early twenties directing anti-aircraft defences during the Second World War as a Captain in Gunnery for the British Army. Demobilised in 1946, she set out in search of fun and freedom in America and found herself swept into a bright and glamorous social circle. She soon counted Joe Alsop and the Cushing Sisters among her new friends and even began to consider becoming a US citizen.In 1949, determined to understand America more deeply, J...

Cyrano is a brash, strong-willed man of many talents whose whimsical aptitude for the spoken word is overshadowed by an attribute that is iconic, outrageous and gigantic—his nose. How can the curiously-snouted Cyrano ever hope to win the affections of the beautiful Roxane?An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast recording, starring Caroline Aaron, Hugo Armstrong, Kalen Harriman, Gregory Itzin, Hamish Linklater, Anna Mathias, Morgan Ritchie, Jason Ritter, Andre Sogliuzzo, Devon Sorvari, and ...

In this unique audio adaptation of Neil Simon’s screenplay, Paula McFadden’s a down-on-her-luck actress who’s forced to take in a new roommate — the eccentric, noisy, and generally unpleasant Eliot Garfield — who also happens to be an actor. As their careers and finances hit new lows, their reluctant partnership threatens to turn into something neither one wants.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast recording, starring (in alphabetical order): Ellis Greer as Donna and others; Anna Mathia...

When Claudia gets pregnant she has a very clear plan for how she wants to give birth. Her pre-natal anxieties inspire her father to create a device for safer deliveries and Claudia realizes that nothing ever goes quite as expected. Includes a conversation with playwright Chiara Atik and Dr. Judith Reichman, an OB/GYN and longtime medical contributor to The Today Show.Bump is part of L.A. Theatre Works’ Relativity Series of science-themed plays. Lead funding for the Relativity Serie...

As Jews tried to escape Nazi Germany in the 1930s, they faced unthinkable roadblocks in obtaining exit visas. And while they were denied entry in one country after another, a bureaucratic oddity enabled some of them to flee to an unlikely destination: Shanghai, China.In this LATW original commission, playwright Kate McAll used the survivors’ own words to create a narrative of people starting their lives over in a completely new land.Funding for this presentation is provided...

A boy from the Bronx becomes the toast of Broadway. Moss Hart’s classic stage autobiography is brought to life, with his son Christopher directing, in a story that illuminates the early years of one of theater’s great humorists.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast production starring:Paul Culos as Eddie, Sam Harris, and ReganHeidi Dippold as Lillie Hart, Dorothy ParkerJake Green as Irving, SlimowitzJane Kaczmarek as Aunt Kate, Beatrice Kaufman, Frieda Fishbe...

DAILY MAIL BOOK OF THE WEEKAs featured in The Oldie'In 1949, aged 26, the bright, well-connected Judy Montagu (first cousin of Mary Churchill and friend of Princess Margaret) criss-crossed the United States on a Greyhound bus. The Greyhound Diary is a vivid and often humorous account of the three months she spent on the road'. The SpectatorJudy Montagu spent her late teenage years and earl...

From This American Life contributor and self-described “history nerd” Sarah Vowell comes a collection of humorous and personal essays investigating American history, pop culture, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.In this insightful and funny collection of personal stories Vowell travels through the American past and in doing so ponders a number of curious questions: Why is she happiest when visiting the sites of bloody struggles like Salem or Gettysbur...

A New York Times –bestselling history of the United States in the years between the Gilded Age and World War I, by the author of A Night to Remember ."[Lord had] the extraordinary ability to bring the past to life." —Jenny Lawrence, author of The Way It Was: Walter Lord on His Life and BooksThough remarkable in their own right,...

"Krist does wonders . . . [He] describes the frantic rescue efforts . . . and the malevolent, unending storm. In a thrilling, climactic chapter, he conjures forth the avalanche."—The New York TimesIn February 1910, a monstrous, record-breaking blizzard hit the Northwest. Nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny town called Wellington, perched high in the Cascade Mountains, where a desperate situation evolved: two trainloads of cold, hungry p...

An enlightening and entertaining inside look at the lifestyles of America's extremely wealthy from the bestselling author of "Our Crowd"It's no secret that the rich are different from the rest of us. But the rich, as author Stephen Birmingham so insightfully points out, are also different from the very rich. There's Society, and then there's Real Society, and it takes multiple generations for families of the former to become entrenched in the latte...

The acclaimed social historian provides an in-depth look at eight society women who shaped upper class culture from the Gilded Age to WWII.Astor. Rockefeller. McCormick. Belmont. Family names that still adorn buildings, streets, and charity foundations. While their men blazed across America with their oil, industry, and railways, the matriarchs founded art museums, opera houses, and symphonies that functioned almost as private clubs. Linked by money, marriage, privi...