The Arkansas Repertory Theatre offers two big-ticket musicals, two comedies — one of them almost straight from Broadway — and one Judge on its 2022-23 season.
Judge Reinhold, Arkansas-connected star of stage and screen, makes his Rep debut in the season opener, Oct. 4-23, in Neil Simon's "Laughter on the 23rd Floor."
Simon, drawing on his experience as a young staff writer on Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows" in the 1950s, sets this "comedy about comedy" in the writers' room of "The Max Prince Show," where the harried staff scrambles to top one another with gags and zingers while competing for the attention of their madcap — some would say madman — star.
The production consists of "fictionalized and archetypal" versions of the actual comedians and comedy writers in that room, who included Mel Brooks and Woody Allen as well as Simon, says Will Trice, the Rep's executive artistic director. "They're all a little crazy, against the overwhelming presence" of this mega-star — to be played by Reinhold — "who is really crazy himself."
Simon also infuses the semi-self-referential story with tinges of period challenges, including McCarthyism and "the network and corporate influences that are creeping into the fun they want to have," Trice explains. "Mostly, though, we see these funny people being funny."
Reinhold is best known for his film roles, including "Stripes," "The Santa Clause" (1, 2 and 3), "Beverly Hills Cop" (1, 2 and 3), "Ruthless People" and particularly "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," as well as "the Close-talker" on TV's "Seinfeld."
"Judge and I have been trying to find a project for three years," Trice says. After some pre-pandemic play readings failed to turn up one that worked, "we finally landed on this one."
Trice describes the play as "such an ode to the art form of comedy and what comedians are like behind the scenes."
Reinhold spends a lot of time in Little Rock, in large part because it is the home town of Amy Miller, whom he married in 2000.
Working with Reinhold is representative of Trice's current philosophy of casting, he says, which, as the Rep's current show, "Into the Woods," demonstrates, is to "engage Arkansas artists, those who are living here, those who grew up here, those who have roots here, even though they have moved away, and blend those with other artists from across the country."
The season lineup includes two musicals, one a classic — Frank Loesser's "Guys and Dolls" (with a book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, based on a Damon Runyon story and characters), onstage Nov. 29-Dec. 30; and one a more contemporary classic — "Little Shop of Horrors" (music by Alan Menken, book and lyrics by Howard Ashman, based on the Roger Corman B-movie classic, screenplay by Charles Griffith), May 30-June 25, 2023.
"They're so good," Trice says. "They're popular for a reason. They have staying power for a reason. 'Guys and Dolls' practically defines 'golden age.' It's funny, there's great music, there's great dancing. 'Little Shop' takes stupid fun about as far as it can go."
In between, the Rep will stage:
◼️ Jan. 31-March 12: "Every Brilliant Thing" by Duncan Macmillan with Johnny Donahoe, in the Rep's "Black Box" performance space on its Second Mezzanine. A 6-year-old devises a list of everything that's "brilliant" about the world for his hospitalized mother, who needs help finding things that are worth living for. The one person in the one-person show: Arkansas actor Chad Bradford.
Donahoe was the first to do the show, much of which is based on his life. Originally set in England, the play has a built-in license to adapt "so elements of the life of the actor doing the show can apply, make the show more immediate for the person who's telling the story, and for the people listening to it," Trice says.
◼️ April 11-30, 2023: "Clyde's" by Lynn Nottage, which the theater describes in a news release as "a delightful new play about reclaiming life, and the perfect sandwich," set in a truck-stop sandwich shop where the formerly incarcerated kitchen staff get a shot at reclaiming their lives.
The show is direct from Broadway, where Trice saw it and immediately felt "it's the perfect Rep show." Though officially a comedy, "there's a lot to think about, a lot to feel."
"It deals with the re-entry of the incarcerated into society, finding their place in the world, finding a purpose, finding joy and happiness — all through the celebration of food," he adds. "They're always offering up the perfect sandwich.
"Clyde, who is actually a woman, is tough as nails on them, and they're trying to get out from under her thumb."
No heavy dramas on this season lineup, "but there's drama in all of it," Trice says. "All great comedy has drama, and a lot of emotion across it. The breadth of human experience is not limited to tragedy. Neither is good art; neither is good theater. Why not favor the fun, why not favor the joyous, when there's so much to be enjoyed in that?"