Crowded Kitchen Players presents "Topsy Turvy" at The IceHouse in Bethlehem June 7 through June 16.
Billed as "a very new farce that tells a very old story", "Topsy Turvy" is set in early 1930s Hollywood.
Having grown tired of the vapid romantic comedies and historical dramas that made her a star, Louise Antoinette strikes a self-compromising bargain with a rapacious movie studio boss, Max Steinberg, that will enable her to direct and play the lead in a motion picture intended to help liberate and empower women--- a screen adaptation of Aristophanes' bawdy Greek anti-war comedy, "Lysistrata", in which the women of Athens refuse to have sex with their husbands until the men stop fighting wars and shedding blood.
The play's title, 'Topsy Turvy', derives from a speech near the conclusion of 'Lysistrata' when one of the sex-starved Greek men observes, "Take my advice, my fellow-countrymen, we should always be drunk! We go to Sparta and enter the city sober. We don't understand a word they say to us. We imagine a lot they don't say at all.
And we report home all wrong, all topsy-turvy."
Asked the intent of the production, writer/director Ara Barlieb, explains, "This is a play about being both good and caring in a world run by people who only know how to be bad and heartless. 
"The studio boss, Max Steinberg, is ham-fisted, crude, uneducated, and sexist to the core. And, he is the contractual lord and master of the studio's star actor, Louise Antoinette, who is his polar opposite--- artistically courageous, politically sensitive, and outspokenly feminist.
"Although the play is set in the early1930s, its rhythms and pacing and masked messages are echoing again in 2019.
"Today, all the good and caring people are fighting with each other about how to be good and caring without not offending the other good and caring people, which has become almost impossible.
"And all the wicked people are like lemmings following the lead lemming to the brink, and trying to drag the rest of us over the cliff with them.
"That's got to stop, and one of the ways we can make it stop it to call out both sides of this highway to hell we're racing down.
"That's what Topsy Turvy tries to do, in its admittedly silly, overtly offensive, and doggedly clumsy way."
WHEN
June 7, 8, 14, 15 @ 800PM
June 9, 16 @ 200PM
WHERE
The Charles A. Brown IceHouse
56 River Street
Bethlehem, PA 18018
TICKETS
Adults $18, Seniors $14, Students $10
INFO and TICKET PURCHASE
call 610-395-7176
write
visit www.ckplayers.com
CAST
Thomas Harrison
Trish Cipoletti
Todd Carpien
Carla Hadley
Brian Wendt
Bruce Brown
Dan Ferry
Florence Taylor
Julisa Trinidad
Tatiana Torres
Jerry Brucker
Nancy Welsh
Emily Kreiger
Michelle Star
Don Swan Jr.
Alexandra Racines