David lives and works in Chicago, IL — where he is the all-powerful Artistic Director of Hell In A Handbag Productions.

Other writing credits include SUPERPUSSYVIXENS Go Faster! Kill!, Joan Crawford Goes to Hell, Touched by Jayne Mansfield, a feminist drag deconstruction of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, and POSEIDON! An Upside-Down Musical which not only won an Award of Excellence for Ensemble Performance, but also topped attendance figures for this years International New York Fringe Festival.

He has also performed numerous roles on stage, including Joan Crawford in two different incarnations, Suzanne Pleshette, Jacqueline Susann and an invisible talking Chihuahua. Talk about range…,

He can currently be seen as Gladys Dasher in the Chicago production of RUDOLPH, The Red-Hosed Reindeer, and is preparing for next season with How Whatever Happened to Baby Jane Happened, and a remixed/remodeled version of his 1998 hit, SCARRIE! The Musical (the original Carrie parody). For more information, visit www.handbagproductions.org.

An Appreciation of Larry Shue
by David L. Gorsline

Larry Shue, a promising young middle-aged actor and playwright, had his career cut short at the age of 39 by the crash of a commuter plane on 23 September 1985. He left behind a small published body of work, including two full-length crowd-pleasing comedies that are a staple of community theatre repertory.

Much of Larry Shue's gentle, thoughtful humor derives from mistaken identity and role-playing, especially when the role-playing gets out of hand. It's not the bing-bang one-liner comedy of someone like Neil Simon. His plays include the following:

* the early Siliasocles;
* the one-act Grandma Duck is Dead, college dormitory zaniness that anticipates themes of the later full-length plays;
* My Emperor's New Clothes, set in the kingdom of Mango-Chutney, a one-act children's musical based on the Hans Christian Andersen story (Shue works in some cross-dressing, as well as a rhyme for "orange");
* and the bittersweet political drama Wenceslas Square, set in 1974 Prague after the Soviet invasion.

But the twin comic achievements are The Nerd and The Foreigner.

Shue's characters and situations in The Nerd are deceptively simple and commonplace: Willum, a likable architect for a protagonist (perhaps he's lacking a little in "gumption"); his sometime girlfriend; a wisecracking best friend; a client with a short fuse and his family; and the title character, the house guest from hell. A simple dinner party, some party games that go a little bit awry -- and by the end of Act I we are in a zone of hilarious insanity. Here is an exchange between the spluttering client and Rick, the nerdy house guest:

WALDGRAVE: Put my fingers in my ears and turn around and hum! I own eight hotels! I come here to do a little business and maybe have a little drink, and look at me! I'm barefoot and half-blind with my goddam head in a bag! And now some goddam chalk inspector is standing here telling me to put my fingers in my ears and and turn around and hum!

RICK: Right. Okay?

Clelia, the client's wife, is a comic gem of a part. Her unique stress-reduction technique is to break small pieces of crockery. When Waldgrave reappears in the second act, we wish that Clelia was with him.

The Nerd was first presented by the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre in April, 1981, with Shue in the role of the architect. It was subsequently produced by the Royal Exchange Theatre Company in Manchester, England, in April, 1982, followed by a very successful West End production. A 1987 Broadway production, directed by Charles Nelson Reilly, is recorded in the Internet Theatre Database.

Everyone is a bit edgier in The Foreigner, but again an assumed identity drives the story and the comedy. The setting is a backwoods lodge in Georgia. A lovable but boring professional proofreader, there on holiday, outwits a scheming preacher and his accomplice with the Ku Klux Klan, and keeps the lodge property in the family. To do so, he must pretend, for an act and a half, to speak no English at all.

These are the entrance stage directions for Owen, the KKK'er who turns out to be all bluster:

(Psychologists tell us to beware of a man with two tattoos. One, he may have gotten on a drunk or a dare. But two means he went back. Owen is a two-tattoo man.)

Perhaps the funniest section is a wordless game of Mirror -- a ballet for two men, a breakfast table, and two empty juice glasses. Or perhaps it's the story of Little Red Riding Hood told in Eastern European gibberish.

It's more difficult to make some of the comedy work in this piece. If played too heavily, the characters will come off simply as stupid caricatures, and the humor will be mean-spirited. As an actor, you have to meet these people on their own terms.

The Foreigner was likewise premiered by the Milwaukee Rep, in January, 1983. It went on to be produced at the off-Broadway Astor Place Theatre, opening in November, 1984, under the direction of Jerry Zaks. In the New York show, Shue played "Froggy" and later Charlie Baker, the title character.

Frank Rich, writing for the New York Times, wasn't impressed. He faulted the play's "preposterous plot" and "convoluted shenanigans," although he did commend Anthony Heald for his star turn as Charlie. While Rich did enjoy the scene in which Charlie teaches the Georgians his language (whatever that might be), the set reminded him of the notorious 80's flop, Moose Murders. You can't believe everything you read in the newspaper.

The Foreigner was still running in New York at the time of Shue's death. He was working on a film adaptation of the play for Disney and a musical. (Perhaps it's just as well that a Hollywood version of the play never saw the light of day.)

The Beech 99 aircraft crashed in Virginia's Blue Ridge, on approach to Shenandoah Valley Airport, which is between Staunton and Harrisonburg. Fourteen people were killed. One of the spooky ironies of the work is that Willum's monologue at the top of the second act of The Nerd is a comic story of a bumpy ride in a commuter plane.

Larry Shue was born in New Orleans on 23 July 1946, and grew up in Chicago. He was graduated cum laude from Illinois Wesleyan University, where he received a B.F.A. in 1968. He served in the Army, and then began his career as professional actor and playwright with the Harlequin Dinner Theatre of Washington, D.C. and Atlanta.

His acting credits include The Mystery of Edwin Drood at the Delacorte in New York, American Buffalo with Berkeley Repertory, and television's One Life to Live. Film appearances include A Common Confusion, The Hungry Leaves, and a short bit in the otherwise woefully bad Sweet Liberty. He won two Obies and two New York Drama Critics Awards.

Casting and design requirements for the following shows are available:

• The Foreigner
• The Nerd
• Grandma Duck Is Dead
• My Emperor's New Clothes
• Wenceslas Square

Larry Shue's plays are published by Dramatists Play Service. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (who helped provide the headshot) has an online exhibit of Larry Shue information drawn from its archives.

As an actor in community theatre, I've been fortunate to appear in two of Larry Shue's plays. If you have an anecdote or recollection of Larry Shue that you'd like to share with the readers of this page, I'd love to receive it.

Thanks to David Gorsline for this fine remembrance of Larry Shue. You may visit more of David's thoughts and comments at <http://www.geocities.com/~charlie_baker/>

Chuck Spoler received his Bachelors degree in Creative Writing from Dennison University and subsequently earned a Masters Degree from University of Baltimore. He works full time at Johns Hopkins doing Hepatitis C research. In 1999 the arrival of a lap top computer coincided with a PBS special about Memorial Day. The graveside image of a man mourning his fallen friend touched Chuck deeply and led him to write his first play Blood Memory. Chuck has been off and running ever since, and has completed twelve works in the last three years, leaving his wife, Linda Apuzzo to tend their herd of goats, sheep, rabbits and alpacas. Blood Memory and Buzz Bombs Fell at Antwerp were produced at Spotlighters last year as Memorial Day and won both the best play and best production awards in the Baltimore Playwrights Festival 2001. Buzz Bombs was also produced by Love Creek Productions at the Creative Place Theater in New York City and was their entry in the Samuel French Short Play Festival in New York in August 2001. In January 2002 Chuck was awarded a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts for his play Gloriana. His play The Inheritance won the Pennsylvania Right to Production Award and was performed at York Little Theater in York, PA in January 2002. . In June 2002 Blood Memory was awarded the Arts and Letters Prize in drama from Georgia State University, which will produce and publish the play in May 2003. For additional information please visit Chuck’s website at http://www.geocities.com/chuckspoler/playwright.html