Write Act Repertory to present The Funny Man

Write Act Repertory Co. will present the world premiere of THE FUNNY MAN, a solo play about America's greatest comic writer, S.J. Perelman, June 19 - July 17, 2022, at the Brickhouse Theatre in N. Hollywood. Performances are Sat. nights at 8pm, Sunday matinees at 1.30 pm.

Written by Willard Manus and starring Sam Wiser, the play is directed by Judith Rose and produced by Write Act's producing artistic director, John Lant. Jonathan Harrison and Judith Rose, associate producers with Zad Potter, stage manager.

S.J. Perelman first came to prominence as the writer for the early Marx Brothers movies. He later became a bellwether writer at The New Yorker, which published his comic sketches and parodies for some four decades. Perelman was also a successful playwright ("One Touch of Venus"), a television personality, and an Oscar-winning screenwriter ("Around the World in 80 Days").

The New York Times called Perelman "an artist whose nonpareil gift of ridicule, dazzling verbal effects, polished style, and keen observation made him a unique and precious figure in our literature."

THE FUNNY MAN is set in a lecture hall at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where Perelman was invited to speak as a guest lecturer in 1976. During the course of his lecture, he dispenses writing advice and talks about some of the colorful figures in his life, such as Groucho Marx, Dorothy Parker, Mike Todd and Bert Lahr. He also describes his comic misadventures while writing travel articles about such exotic locales as China, India and The Garden of Allah (Hollywood).