Once in a Lifetime Free online reading

It’s 1929 as The Jazz Singer hits the silver screen and the talkies promise to change movies forever. Enter three down-and-out vaudevillians who hatch a hare-brained scheme to “make it big” in Tinsel Town. Their plan? To open a voice academy for the witless stars of silent movies. The only things standing in their way are ditzy starlets and power-hungry movie moguls.

Starring Ed Asner and directed by Moss Hart’s son, this is top-of-the-bill screwball comedy and Kaufman and Hart genius at its very best.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring (in alphabetical order) Caroline Aaron as Helen Hobart/Miss Chasen; Edward Asner as Herman Glogauer; Jen Dede as Susan Walker; Jeanie Hackett as Mrs. Walker/Miss Leighton; David Kaufman as George Lewis; Katharine Leonard as Florabel Leigh/Bridesmaid #2; Joe Liss as The Porter/Ernest/Mr. Flick/Weisskopf/The Bishop; Kellie Matteson as Phyllis Fontaine/Bridesmaid #1; Jon Matthews as Rudolph Kammerling/Fontaine Chauffer/Leading Man; Sarah Rafferty as May Daniels; Jonathan Silverman as Jerry Hyland; Steve Vinovich as Lawrence Vail/Leigh Chauffer/ Meterstein. Directed by Christopher Hart. Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, in October 2009.