New season at Manoa Valley Theatre includes 'Be More Chill,' 'Joy Luck Club'

Jul. 19—Manoa Valley Theatre brings live, in-person performances back to the stage starting in September with eight plays, including four Hawaii premieres.

The season opens Sept. 2-19 with the Hawaii premiere of "Be More Chill, " a coming-of-age sci-fi musical about teenager Jeremy Heere, who discovers a tiny supercomputer that promises to land him a date with his crush and an invitation to a big party, but then finds there are hazards to being the big man on campus.

That will be followed in November by "The Joy Luck Club, " playwright Susan Kim's adaptation of Amy Tan's bestseller about four Chinese immigrant women and their relationships with their American-born daughters. The play runs Nov. 4-14.

MVT then celebrates the holiday season with "It's a Wonderful Life—A Live Radio Play." Performed by an African American cast on a stage set up like a radio station, the staging adds a new flavor to the classic tale about a struggling banker who gets a new lease on life with the help of an angel. The production has a brief run Dec. 2-5.

After New Year's the company has five more plays : "Desperate Measures, " billed as a "Wild West musical comedy " based on Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure, " Jan. 13-30 ; "The 39 Steps, " a parody of the Alfred Hitchcock film, featuring actors portraying dozens of characters, March 17-27 ; Lauren Yee's "Cambodian Rock Band, " a dramatic comedy in which a Cambodian American woman and her father, a survivor of the brutal Khmer Rouge, return to their ancestral homeland, May 5-15 ; Lisa Matsumoto's "Once Upon One Time, " a mashup of classic fairy tales told "local style, " June 30 to July 10 ; and "Spamilton : An American Parody, " an over-the-top take on the Broadway blockbuster "Hamilton " which pokes fun at classic Broadway musicals and the personalities that make them hum.

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