Los Altos Stage Company Presents MAPLE AND VINE, Now thru 2/22

Stormy weather got you down? It's always sunny at Maple & Vine.

The Los Altos Stage Company presents the third play of our 2014/2015 Season, a dark comedy by playwright Jordan Harrison that explores our absurd adoration of yesteryear and the lengths we will go to escape our present-day realities. Maple & Vine opens tonight, January 29 and runs through February 22 at the Bus Barn Theater in Los Altos.

Katha and Ryu have become allergic to their 21st-century lives. After they meet a charismatic man from a community of 1950s reenactors, they forsake cellphones and sushi for cigarettes and Tupperware parties. In this compulsively authentic world, the couple is surprised by what their neighbors - and they themselves - are willing to sacrifice for happiness.

Members of the Society of Dynamic Obsolescence (the SDO for short) agree to live every moment of their lives as if it is 1955, and not just the Stepford Wives version - there are dossiers for suburban housewives, secret Communists, beatniks and business men. The characters in Maple & Vine willingly surrender their modern social privileges and conveniences for a lifestyle with more rules, restrictions and repression. The paradoxical promise of the SDO is that "You are not free. But in another way, you're more free."

Maple & Vine ran Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons and at American Conservatory Theater after premiering in the 2011 Humana Festival. Other plays by Jordan Harrison include: Doris to Darlene, Futura, Amazons and Their Men, Act a Lady, Finn in the Underworld, Kid-Simple, The Flea and the Professor, Standing on Ceremony, Fit for Feet, and The Museum Play. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, the Kesselring Prize, the Heideman Award, the Loewe Award for Musical Theater, Jerome and McKnight Fellowships from The Playwrights' Center, and a NEA/TCG Playwright-in-Residence Grant.

The Los Altos Stage Company's production of Maple & Vine is directed by Gary Landis, Executive Director. This production features a talented ensemble of Bus Barn Theater veterans, as well as new faces, including:

Lorie Goulart as Katha

Jeffery Sun as Ryu

Danny Martin as Dean

Courtney Hacher as Jenna/Ellen

Clinton Williams as Omar/Roger

Performances are Wednesday through Saturday evenings at 8 pm and Sunday matinees at 3 pm. Ticket prices range from $18 (student) to $34. Opening Night tickets, including a reception with the artists, are $36. Tickets are available on-line at www.losaltosstage.org or by calling the Box Office at (650) 941-0551.

The Los Altos Stage Company is a quintessential American neighborhood playhouse, serving Los Altos and the greater South Bay area, and paying tribute to the full canon of American musicals, comedies, and dramas. This 19-year-old theater company strives to bring together a diversity of theater enthusiasts, practitioners, and supporters to create, explore and celebrate the rich tapestry of American culture and experience through live theater. The Los Altos Stage produces five to six shows annually at its intimate 99-seat theater located on the Los Altos Civic Center campus.

Pictured: Courtney Hatcher as Ellen and Danny Martin as Dean. Photo by Chris Peoples.