Open your ears for three plays in Newport-Mesa

Tom Titus

Heard a good play lately? You have the chance to listen to three of

them this weekend.

The occasions are forms of entertainment known as “reader’s

theater,” in which actors, without benefit of the full rehearsal

process, read a play from the script for an audience.

The venues are the Newport Theater Arts Center, where two plays

will be read this weekend, and South Coast Repertory, which has a new

one on tap Monday evening.

One of the three, “Men’s Singles” at the Newport Theater, will be

familiar to those who’ve been following South Coast Repertory for

several years. It was presented a few seasons ago on the old Second

Stage. The other two -- “The Guys” at Newport and “Happy Valley” at

SCR -- will be brand new to local audiences.

The first of the three staged readings is “Men’s Singles” by D.B.

Gilles, offering what has been labeled a “revealing and very funny

look at the modern American male of the would-be macho species.” In

this play, three men -- an advertising executive, a psychiatrist and

a gay businessman -- meet every Tuesday evening at the club for a

tennis match, at which they discuss marriage and relationships.

“Men’s Singles” will be presented tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m.

at the Newport theater, 2501 Cliff Drive, Newport Beach. Some mature

language is used in the play. Admission is $8.

Sunday, the center switches over to “The Guys,” an interview of a

New York fire captain who lost many of the men from his station in

the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The interview, conducted by a

sympathetic woman reporter, creates what is billed as “a moving,

tender and insightful presentation of the human experience of loss,

responsibility and determination” of many Americans.

Admission to this reading is free for members and season ticket

subscribers at the Newport Theater Arts Center. The reading will be

presented Sunday at 2:30 and 7 p.m. Reservations for both readings

can be made by calling (949) 631-0288.

“Happy Valley” is a play by Aurorae Khoo focusing on the 1997

transfer of the government of Hong Kong from Britain to China. The

play focuses on Tuppy, an adolescent girl searching for happiness in

a changing Hong Kong.

Khoo teaches undergraduate screenwriting at USC’s School of Cinema

and Television. Her last play, “Double Auntie Waltz,” won the Kennedy

Center’s Edgar L. Stevens award in 2000. The reading will be held

Monday at 7:30 p.m. on South Coast Repertory’s Julianne Argyros

Stage. Tickets are $8 and can be reserved by calling the theater’s

box office at (714) 708-5555.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Fridays.