2 Pianos 4 Hands at Laguna Playhouse

LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE presents
the First Show of its 2023-2024 Season…
2 PIANOS 4 HANDS 
Written by Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt
Directed by Tom Frey

THE IVORY TICKLING BEGINS WEDNESDAY, JULY 5
 AT THE LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE IN LAGUNA BEACH!

“A masterful blend of comedy, storytelling, and outstanding piano talent! Not to be missed!”  - StageandCinema.com

LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE is thrilled to present the first show of its 2023-2024 season, the hilarious international musical sensation, 2 PIANOS 4 HANDS, written by Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt and directed by Tom Frey. 
2 PIANOS 4 HANDS begins previews on Wednesday, July 5; will open on Sunday, July 9 at 5:30pm (press opening); and perform through Sunday, July 23 at the Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Dr. in Laguna Beach.

Get ready for an interlude of laughter and music as 2 men, or “4 hands,” take us on a journey about their would-be careers as concert pianists. The talented duo trade stories about piano lessons, pushy parents and eccentric teachers while playing everything from Bach to Billy Joel. Both hilarious and touching, the musical comedy captures the humor that comes with the path to becoming a pianist, as well as the sense of loss attached with eventually learning to let go of your wildest dreams. "A rare jewel of real entertainment, 2 PIANOS 4 HANDS not only hits all the right notes, but tickles the ivories and your funny bone too!” (The Daily Mail)

ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM AND CAST

TOM FREY (Director) is the new artistic director of the Peterborough Players in Peterborough, New Hampshire, as well as the U.S. resident director of 2 Pianos 4 Hands. He has directed over 20 productions of 2P4H at theatres around the country, including: Portland Stage, The Cape Playhouse, Stages Repertory Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Pittsburgh City Theatre, the Rubicon, and many others. In addition to directing the show, he has performed the show over 600 times in the United States and Canada. He has played both roles, but spent most of his time playing the role of “Ted.” During the pandemic, he helmed the critically successful 2021 outdoor summer season for the Peterborough Players, including an acclaimed production of Our Town, performed onsite in downtown Peterborough, widely believed to be a heavy inspiration for Thornton Wilder’s “Grover’s Corners.” Also at the Players, he directed Cabaret, Circle Mirror Transformation, A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline, Always...Patsy Cline, the U.S. premiere of Kristen DaSilva’s Where You Are, and others, in addition to spending the better part of 12 years as a member of the Players’ Acting Company. As an actor, he has performed in venues across the country, with some favorites including Daniel Beaty’s Breath and Imagination from early development workshops to Hartford Stage, Pittsburgh City Theatre, and Cleveland Playhouse; Dirty Blonde at the Cleveland Playhouse and Pittsburgh Public Theatre; Souvenir at Seven Angels Theatre; Evelyn Oakleigh in Anything Goes at Milwaukee Skylight Opera Theatre; Mack Sennet in Mack and Mabel and Wilson Mizner in the American Regional Premier of Sondheim’s Road Show at Stages Repertory Theatre, Houston. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and a fairly recent resident of Peterborough, NH. Love to Bridget. 

TED DYKSTRA (Co-Creator/Original Co-Director) started playing piano at age six, and peaked at age twelve, when he had a particularly memorable string of firsts competing in the Edmonton Kiwanis Music Festival. His acting career began at a young age in St Albert, Alberta, playing the 2nd Bird in Once Upon a Clothesline, but his breakout role was Bilbo Baggins in his school’s grade eight production of The Hobbit.  Since then, he has gone on to play leading roles on every major stage in Canada, often combining his musical skills in such roles as: Mozart in Amadeus; Cale Blackwell, a character based on Jerry Lee Lewis, in Fire (seven Canadian theatres); Shostakovitch in Master Class (Manitoba Theatre Centre); 

Glenn Gould in An Evening with Glenn Gould (National Arts Centre); Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Crow’s Theatre); and Cousin Kevin in The Who’s Tommy (Mirvish Productions); and school children around the world know him as Bach in the film Bach’s Fight for Freedom. He also wrote and composed the acclaimed musical Evangeline, which was produced at The Charlottetown Festival and The Citadel Theatre in Edmonton. Other favorite acting roles include the title role in Hamlet (Theatre Calgary); For Soulpepper Theatre: Teach in American Buffalo, Daffyd Llewelyn in A Chorus of Disapproval and Yuri in his own adaptation of Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata; for Stratford: title role in Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Ariel in The Tempest; as well as three seasons of leading roles for The Shaw Festival. Most recently Ted portrayed Scrooge in The Citadel Theatre’s landmark new production of A Christmas Carol, a role he originated and has played for three seasons in a row. In 2000, he turned his attention to directing, and since has directed many award-winning shows in Toronto and across the country. He has also directed 2P4H across America and in Australia and Hong Kong. In 2014, Ted and his wife Diana Bentley founded The Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto’s East End, and it has become the most successful indie theatre in the country, garnering its artists a staggering 29 Dora nominations in 6 seasons. He regularly directs and acts there. He has appeared in dozens of films and TV shows and most recently was a regular on Season 6 of “The Expanse.” He is also the voice of Dad Tiger on “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.” He is also a Founding Member of Soulpepper Theatre and in the award department he has received 6 Doras (acting, musical direction, producing), a Gemini (acting), a Sterling (musical direction), a Merritt (directing) and a Chalmers (writing). 

RICHARD GREENBLATT (Co-Creator/Original Co-Director) is an actor, director, writer, and musician who has been a professional theatre artist for the last 49 years. He was born in Montreal and studied piano for 10 years with the late Professor Dorothy Morton of the McGill Conservatory of Music. He studied theatre at Dawson College before pursuing his acting training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England. Upon graduating, he worked at Leeds Playhouse for a season, returning to Canada in 1975. Since then, he has performed in theatres in Toronto, across Canada, and abroad, playing such diverse roles as Henry David Thoreau, Spinoza, and Sam Goldwyn, as well as in feature films, television and radio. 

Other favorite roles include: The Fool in King Lear, Creon in Antigone, The Concierge in The Gladstone Variations, Galbraith in Essay, Cadman in I Call Myself Princess, and touring to Galway, Ireland, as The Father in Enda Walsh’s Bedbound. He has directed well over 130 productions for theatres across the country — the vast majority being original and/or Canadian works — including: plays by George F. Walker, Judith Thompson, Jason Sherman, Adam Pettle, Diane Flacks, Shirley Cheechoo, Michael Healey, Julie Tepperman, and Rob Fothergill, amongst numerous others. Classical works he has directed include plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Shaw, Brecht and Shepard, amongst many others. As a writer, he wrote or co-wrote: Soft Pedaling, 2 Pianos 4 Hands, Sibs, The Theory of Relatives, i.d., Letters from Lehrer, Care, and Athabasca. 2 Pianos 4 Hands has played on five continents and in over 150 cities since it opened at the Tarragon Theatre in April 1996. Greenblatt himself has performed the play with co-creator Ted Dykstra over 1,000 times across Canada, and in New York City, Washington D.C., London, U.K., and Tokyo. He has also directed the premieres of numerous groundbreaking and award-winning plays for young audiences, including Seesaw; Mirror Game; Misha; Danny, King of the Basement; Wrecked; The Incredible Speediness of Jamie Cavanaugh and Kindness. Since the Covid Pandemic, he has “pivoted” to being an author. In 2021, his book “Text and Context, The Operative Word” was published by J.G. Shillingford Press, and his memoir, “Two of the Best in the Neighborhood, An Anecdotal History of 2 Pianos 4 Hands,” has just been released, and is on sale at J Gordon Shillingford Publishing! His third writing/performing collaboration with Diane Flacks, “Pals,” will be presented at the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre in the fall of 2023. Oh, and he’s writing his first novel. He has received numerous nominations for his work and has won seven Doras and two Chalmers Awards. He lives in Toronto with partner Tanya Greve and their daughter, Amelia, and is the proud father of Natasha, Will, and the dearly missed Luke Greenblatt. 

The Cast of 2 PIANOS 4 HANDS features:

JEFFERSON MCDONALD (Ted) is pleased to bring his passion for acting and music to the Laguna Playhouse stage in his fifth production of 2 Pianos 4 Hands (North Coast Rep, Cincy Playhouse, Peterborough Players, Mayfield Dinner Theater).

A three-time Broadway World Award winner and recipient of the Cincy Beat Award for Best Musical Actor, Jefferson has brought his passion for drama, comedy, and music to stages all over the United States and Canada. Growing up on an organic poultry farm, Jefferson realized he had dexterous fingers as the fastest chicken gutter in Upstate New York. He soon realized his fingers could move just as fast playing Mozart and at age eleven he started pursuing music aggressively. He later added drama to his music pursuits and would study in London and Moscow (MXAT) and with the Tom Todoroff studio in NYC, receiving degrees in Drama from Ithaca College and an M.F.A in Acting from the FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training where he was cast as Spike in Vanya, Sonya, Masha & Spike, which resulted in him being shirtless in the New York Times. He would reprise that role at St. Louis Rep and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Not long after, while performing in Cabaret, Jefferson auditioned for the role of Jerry Lee Lewis in Million Dollar Quartet. He was cast and would perform in twelve productions of that show leading to the inception of his original musical, Jerry Lee Lewis VS Jerry Lee Lewis, produced by Playhouse Stage Co. During the pandemic he would start a band and tour his rock & roll show, Jefferson McDonald’s Great Balls Of Fire, on Princess and Celebrity cruise ships.  

MATTHEW MCGLOIN (Richard) is honored to team up again with Jefferson & Tom, having previously collaborated with them on 2 Pianos 4 Hands at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the Peterborough Players, and the Mayfield Theatre. NY/Off-Broadway: The Hello Girls (Prospect Theater Company/59E59, OCR), Bastard Jones (The Cell), Casablanca Box (HERE Arts), Xanadu (Piper Theatre), workshops/readings with Tectonic Theater Project, Abingdon Theatre Company, Dixon Place, The Lark. Regional: Cabaret (Peterborough Players), The Play That Goes Wrong (Repertory Theatre St. Louis), Murder for Two (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre), Beautiful Star (Triad Stage), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (Signature Theatre), Misalliance, Cinderella (Olney Theatre Center), As You Like It (Folger Theatre), History on Foot (Ford’s Theatre), various shows at The Kennedy Center and Virginia Shakespeare Festival. 

The Design Team for 2 PIANOS 4 HANDS is Scenic Design by Marty Burnett; Lighting Design by Matthew Novotny; Sound Design by Ian Scot. The Production Stage Manager is Vernon Willett.
 

ABOUT THE SCHEDULE AND PRICING
2 PIANOS 4 HANDS will preview on Wednesday, July 5 at 7:30pm; Thursday, July 6 at 2pm & 7:30pm; Friday, July 7 at 7:30pm & Saturday, July 8 at 2pm & 7:30pm; will open on Sunday, July 9 at 5:30pm (press opening) and perform through Sunday, July 23 at the Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Dr. in Laguna Beach.

Performances will be Wednesdays through Fridays at 7:30pm; Saturdays at 2pm & 7:30pm; Sundays at 1:00pm & 5:30pm. There will be added performances on Thursday, July 13 at 2:00pm and Tuesday, July 18 at 7:30pm.  There will be no performance on Sunday, July 23 at 5:30pm.                                                                                                                                   
Tickets range from $50 - $81 and can be purchased online at www.lagunaplayhouse.com or by calling (949) 497-ARTS (2787). Group discounts are available by calling 949-497-2787 ext. 229.  Prices subject to change.                                                                                                                                                          
The box office is open Tuesdays - Sundays: 12pm to 4pm; Mondays open 2 hours prior to show time and until 15 minutes after curtain.  Open until showtime on all performance days.

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For more information on all shows and programming visit www.lagunaplayhouse.com.  LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE is located at 606 Laguna Canyon Road in Laguna Beach.   

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To schedule press interviews, photos or press comps, please contact David Elzer/DEMAND PR at 818/508-1754 or by e-mail at davidelzer@me.com.