North Coast Repertory Theatre Presents... Casa Del HaHa 9/14

North Coast Repertory Theatre Presents... Casa Del HaHa With Your Host, Phil Johnson.

An outrageous night of risqué & fast-paced Sketch and Standup Comedy, a la 'Saturday Night Live'... hosted by the wildly bizarre 'Senor Phil', it's an always changing show of original material. Featuring some very funny performers of LA and San Diego:

Aristotle Athires, Rawle Lewis, Jacque Wilke,

Melinda Gilb, Debra Wanger & Eileen Bowman

One Night Only!

Tuesday, September 14th @7:00 PM

Special Happy Hour Begins @ 5:30 PM

$1 Stone Ales & FREE Buffet included with your ticket!

The lights come up and the lusty, outrageous Señor Phil immediately commands attention. He sings. He seduces. He provokes grown men to the point of tears...and helpless laughter. Welcome to the bizarre world of Casa del Haha, a Spanish café of comedy, song and inspired lunacy taking over the North Coast Rep stage one night only, Tuesday, Sept. 14.

Casa del Haha is the brainchild of actor singer comedian Phil Johnson, who most recently delivered some of the funniest moments as Assistant Principal Douglas Panch in the Rep's smash hit, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Audiences will also remember Johnson as the scheming, beleaguered husband in the Rep's hilarious Don't Dress for Dinner.

A yearning for the freedom of sketch comedy and improv propelled Johnson to develop Casa del Haha a little over a year ago in Los Angeles. To aid and abet him in his quest for craziness, Johnson chooses comics and actor friends he admires and works with in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Joining Señor Phil at Casa del Haha are San Diego favorites Melinda Gilb, Debra Wanger, Eileen Bowman and Jacque Wilke, along with Los Angeles standup comics Aristotle Athires and Rawle Lewis.

Melinda Gilb, an accomplished sketch artist, has appeared in countless San Diego musical productions, including Spelling Bee and Hello Dolly. She won the Craig Noel Award for her role as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, and was the co-author and original cast member in the ever-popular, Suds.

Debra Wanger is a charming, quick-witted character actress and writer who was last seen in San Diego in Anything Goes.

Eileen Bowman, last seen in Spelling Bee and a perennial in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, employs cartoon-type voices and mannerisms to elicit laughs and delight audiences.

Jacque Wilke appeared with Johnson in Don't Dress for Dinner. He labels her brand of humor as "wild and irreverent."

Aristotle Athires, the "Mystery Man," bills himself as "the great classical guitarist, Aristotle" - then doesn't play a note. Athires is an observational humorist with an admittedly weird Spanish accent, who subtly plays a wild man.

According to Johnson, crowds love Rawle Lewis, a Jamaican who had a lead role in the movie Cool Running. His laid-back, underplayed humor allows him to stretch the limits of comedy.

The multi-talented Johnson regularly receives rave reviews for his work. The Chicago Tribune called him "wickedly on-target." The Los Angeles Times recommended his performance, praising it as "remarkable and satirical," and The San Diego Union-Tribune

branded him as "terrific... an ultra-sly wit...sublime in his comic timing."

As Johnson, aka Señor Phil, describes it, "This show is a wonderful brew of modern hip standups and really outrageous theatricality- one wild thing keeps clashing right into the others. Anything can happen at Casa del Haha. The show moves at lightning speed, with sketches, songs, and some of the funniest standup comics of LA and San Diego peppered in between- everything is fair game for skewering at Casa del Haha."

To add to the festive mood, the Rep will hold a Happy Hour beginning at 5:30 p.m. with free buffet by Jimbo's, $1 Stone Pale Ales and $2 Arrogant Bastards.

Tickets for the 7 p.m. Casa del Haha show are $20; senior, student, military, Drama Queen and subscriber discounts apply. North Coast Repertory Theatre is located at 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive in the Lomas Santa Fe Shopping Center in Solana Beach. Call (858) 481-1055 or visit www.northcoastrep.org.

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