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Different Stages
http://www.main.org/diffstages/
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Different Stages continues its 2011 - 2012 season with Is Life Worth Living? by Lennox Robinson. A traveling repertory troupe comes to a small village in Ireland and after a week or so of Ibsen, Chekhov, and Strindberg, the town is driven mad. Is Life Worth Living? is a gloriously goofy comedy that imagines the undesirable effects a steady diet of serious drama might have on the amiable residents of the provincial seaside town of Inish.
The leading actors of the traveling troupe are played by Mick Darcy (Humpty) and Lorella Loftus (Elizabeth, the Heart of a King). The hotelier, his sister, and his wife are played by Andy Brown (Inherit the Wind), and newcomers to Austin Mary Kennelly and Jean Budney. Playing the romantic leads are Gabriel Pena (The 21 Would be Lives of Phinea Hamm) and Alexandra Russo (Antarctica). The other cast members include, Bethany Harbaugh (The Children’s Hour), Jonathan Urso (Mornings at Seven), Steven Fay (Murder on the Nile) and Ben Weaver (The Last Days of Judas Iscariot), Freddy Carnes (The Hamlet Project) and Ryan Chody.
Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this comedy introduces us to the Sycamores, a family that delights in eccentricity. They may seem mad, but they show us that those who pursue convention for its own sake and who need to conform to society’s conventions are the maddest of us all. This play about living life to the fullest, following your own dreams, and daring to be unconventional has been a perennial since its debut in 1936.
Quills
by Douglas Wright
January 2013,
City Theater, 3823 Airport, Suite D
Director-Norman Blumensaadt
Sex. Perversion. Violence. These are the themes of the tales that drip from the ink-laden quills of the notoriously irreverent Marquis de Sade in this Obie Award winning play. Confined to the Charneton Asylum for the Insane for the outlandish escapades he’d committed during the Napoleonic Era, the Marquis continues to pen his stories to the delight of the young seamstress, Madeleine, and to the scorn of Charenton’s devout Abbe DuCoulmeir. When the Abbe attempts to silence the Marquis by taking his quills, his ink, and his paper, something intriguing occurs: the Marquis still finds a way to voice his scandalous yarns. As the Abbe’s religious devotion clashes with the Marquis’s dedication to freedom of expression, the audience is treated to a tale of wit, irony, blasphemy, philosophy, and the struggle for power told partly as a blend of comedy of manners and Grand Guignol with a dash of grotesque exaggeration and a soupcon of gore.
Good People
by David Lindsay-Abaire
April – May; City Theate
3823 Airport, Suite D
Director-Karen Jambon
With humor and pathos, Good People, explores the struggles, shifting loyalties, and unshakeable hopes that come with having next to nothing in America. Set in Boston’s Southie neighborhood, where a night on the town means a rousing night of bingo, where this month’s paycheck barely covers last month’s bills, we meet Margaret Walsh. Margaret has lost her job, is facing eviction, and scrambling to catch a break. When she re-acquaints with a friend from the old neighborhood, someone who is now a very successful doctor, she attempts to use their childhood acquaintance as a ticket to turning her life around. Good People is tough and tender and explores the tension of class in America. Pending availability of performance rights.
Child’s Play
by Robert Marasco
June – July
The Vortex, 2307 Manor Rd
Director-Bob Tolaro
Something is amiss in a Catholic boys’ boarding school. The students have become sinister, furtive, and conspiratorial as they steal up and down staircases after hours. The menace erupts in savagery as the students torture one of their members and then another and then…. What is the disease that has settled in their souls? Who is torturing the crotchety classics professor by sending obscene photographs to his dying mother? And why? - The answer is hate in its devilish forms of pride, envy, and jealousy- a hate so perverse that is has infested the students and the staff. The New York Times called this play “a powerful melodrama the will thrill audiences for a long time to come.” Pending availability of performance rights.
April 13 – May 5, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m. City Theater, 3823 Airport Blvd., Ste. D (click for map) “Pick your Price: $15, $20, $25, $30
Different Stages continues its 2011 - 2012 season with one of Dame Agatha's most popular mysteries. Simon Mostyn has recently married Kay Ridgeway, a rich, beautiful woman, having thrown over his former lover Jacqueline. The couple are on their honeymoon and are at present on a paddle steamer on the Nile. With them is Canon Pennefather, Kay's guardian, and Jacqueline, who has been dogging their footsteps all through the honeymoon. Also on the boat are a rich, ill tempered woman with her niece and companion, a rather direct young man, a Doctor who nurses a grudge against Kay's father and Kay's maid. During the voyage, well, you'll just have to see what happens.
Directed by Norman Blumensaadt, Murder on the Nile features Joe Hartman (Too Many Husbands) as Simon, Carrie Stephens (The Night of the Iguana) as Kay Ridgeway, and Martina Ohlhauser (Too Many Husbands) as Jacqueline. Don Owen (Our Town) plays Kay’s guardian. Susan Roberts (Humble Boy) plays the ill-tempered woman and Lainey Murphy (Peer Gynt) plays her niece. Steven Fay (Getting Married) plays the doctor and Christl Climans (Planet of the Mermaids) plays Kay’s maid. Rounding out the cast are Craig Kanne and Wade Russell.
Click 'Read more' to view additional images by Bret Brookshire . . . .
UPDATE: Lisa Scheps and Nicole Shira interview director Karen Jambon and cast; Bridget Farias and Nikki Zook do a scene from the production on KOOP-FM's program Off Stage and On the Air, January 4 (12 min., 30 sec.)
Found on-line: images by Bret Brookshire for the
presentation of
The Children's Hour
by Lillian Hellman
January 6 - 28, Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
at the City Theatre, 3823 Airport Road (behind the Shell station)(click for map)Pick your Price Tickets: $15, $20, $25, $30 ** Reservations: 926-6747 **
UPDATE: Lisa Scheps and Nicole Shira interview director Karen Jambon and cast; Bridget Farias and Nikki Zook do a scene from the production on KOOP-FM's program Off Stage and On the Air, January 4 (12 min., 30 sec.)
Found on-line:
presents
The Children's Hour
by Lillian Hellman
January 6 - 28, Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
at the City Theatre, 3823 Airport Road (behind the Shell station)(click for map)Pick your Price Tickets: $15, $20, $25, $30 ** Reservations: 926-6747 **
Different Stages continues its 2011 – 2012 season with The Children's Hour. Award–winning playwright Lillian Hellman entered the world of the theater with a resounding thunder of acclaim in 1934 with this, her first and most famous play. The Children's Hour is the story of how a selfish child's whispered accusation destroys the lives of two young schoolteachers. A devastating story of deceit, shame and courage, its potent exploration of a culture of fear remains startlingly relevant.
Karen Jambon (Mornings at Seven) is the director of The Children's Hour. Playing the two schoolteachers, Karen and Martha, are Nikki Zook (Spider's Web) and Bridget Farias (Titus Andronicus). Erich Peterson (Suddenly Last Summer) plays Doctor Joe Cardin, Karen's boyfriend, the only male character. Laura Ray (Agnes of God) plays Mary Tilford, the student who accuses the two teachers. Rae Petersen (The Red Balloon) plays Mary's grandmother, Mrs. Tilford, and Miriam Rubin (Eurydice) plays Martha's meddling aunt, Mrs. Lily Mortar. Rounding out the cast are Molly Bentley, Bethany Harbaugh, Helen Hutka, Katie Kohler, Sara Billeaux, and Nguyen Stanton.
Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. Tickets are Pick your Price: $15, $20, $25, and $30. For tickets and information call 926–6747.
