THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT Runs Through 8/24 at Odyssey Theatre

Never underestimate the power of designer shoes on matters of the heart. Theatre Planners presents a romantic comedy by Emmy Award-winning writer Peter Lefcourt. Terri Hanauer directs the world premiere of The Way You Look Tonight, opening tonight, July 12 as a guest production at the Odyssey Theatre.

Dinner With Friends meets La Cage aux Folles in Lefcourt's fanciful soufflé about two couples - a pair of ex-spouses and their new mates. When the four get together for the first time in years, it blows up in a delightful mess of romantic complications.

"People are always trying to categorize relationships, to put them in tidy little packets," says one of the characters in the play. "But there are things that don't fit in tidy little packets."

"No one is safe from the exquisite perversity of the human heart," Lefcourt points out. "We are pulled along in unpredictable directions. You just never know who you might fall in love with."

The accomplished cast of The Way You Look Tonight features Robb Derringer (PRT productions of The Time Of Your Life, Of Mice And Men, The Blue Dahlia, Prelude To A Kiss); Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award winner John Marzilli (The Grapes of Wrath, The Manchurian Candidate at West Coast Ensemble; Animal Farm, The Trial at Company of Angels); Robin Riker (Ovation nominations for All My Sons with Neil Patrick Harris, Len Cariou and Laurie Metcalf at the Geffen, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, at the Blank and Sex, Sex, Sex, Sex, and Sex at the Matrix - for which she also received an LA Weekly nom); Blake Silver (benefit performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor with Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Tracey Ullman, and William Shatner at Shakespeare Center LA, Tartfuffe at The Theatre @ Boston Court, Is He Dead? at ICT); and Sean Smith (Ovation and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards for his role in the L.A. premiere of Chess, ten different roles in the original La Jolla Playhouse production of Jersey Boys, and the full 4-1/2 year run of the original L.A. production of The Phantom Of The Opera).

Playing a cameo role and acting as a catalyst to some of the action is... a pair of Fluevogs.

"Shoes bring out feelings of love and responsibility in the play," explains Hanauer. "Fluevogs are super cool shoes that can be worn by both sexes. Who knows? In the end, maybe it's all about shoes."

Peter Lefcourt's other plays include La Ronde de Lunch; Mutually Assured Destruction; The Assassination of Leon Trotsky: A Comedy; The Audit; Only the Dead Know Burbank; and Sweet Talk, which he adapted into a feature film. A refugee from the trenches of Hollywood, Peter has written for Cagney and Lacey, for which he won an Emmy Award; Monte Carlo, in which he managed to keep Joan Collins in the same wardrobe for 35 pages; Danielle Steel's Fine Things; The Women of Windsor, a miniseries about the British Royal Family; the Showtime series Beggars & Choosers, which he created and ran; and ABC's Desperate Housewives, for which he was a co-executive producer. He has published eight novels: "The Deal" which was adapted into a movie starring William H. Macy, Meg Ryan and LL Cool J; "The Dreyfus Affair," now in its 15th printing; the best-selling "Di And I"; "Abbreviating Ernie"; "The Woody"; "Eleven Karens"; "The Manhattan Beach Project"; and "Purgatory Gardens," set to come out in 2015.

This marks Terri Hanauer's fifth collaboration with Lefcourt. She previously directed his La Ronde de Lunch in an Ovation Recommended production for the Katselas Theatre Company; the world premieres of Mutually Assured Destruction and The Assassination of Leon Trotsky: A Comedy, both at the Odyssey; and the feature film adaptation of his play Sweet Talk, which has just been released and is available on Video on Demand and iTunes. Other directing credits include Mitch Hara's Mutant Olive at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, NY Solo Festival and Whitefire Theatre Solo Festival ("Best Solo Show" award); Donald Margulies' Collected Stories, also at the Odyssey, which was invited to the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival; and The Trip Back Down by John Bishop at the Whitefire.

Set design for The Way You Look Tonight is by Celine Diano; lighting design is by Michael Gend; sound design is by Dino Herrmann; costume design is by Shannon Kennedy; choreography is by Tracy Silver; fight director is Mike Mahaffey; graphic design is by Nancy Nimoy; and the stage managers are Emily Vredenburg and Angelica Estevez. Racquel Lehrman, Theatre Planners produces.

The Way You Look Tonight opens for press on July 12 and continues through Aug. 24. Performances take place Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 3 p.m. There will be two preview performances, on Thursday, July 10 and Friday, July 11 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 on Fridays and Sundays and $30 on Saturdays; previews are $15. The Odyssey Theatre is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, 90025. For reservations and information, call (323) 960-7712 or go to www.plays411.com/tonight.

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