From: Dean Steeves [mailto:propaganda@laughing.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2010 12:03 PM
Subject: Winding Road's New Production
For Immediate Release
January 14, 2010
contact:
Dean Steeves
520-749-3800
Winding Road Theater Ensemble
A Valentine for Tucson Theater Audiences
(Tucson, Arizona) – Winding Road Theater Ensemble announces the second production of its inaugural season: Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune by Terrence McNally, which will take place at the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Tucson, Arizona. A sexy, humorous play about fearlessly—and fearfully—falling in love, the play will be performed by a real-life married couple Amy Erbe and Terry Erbe. Winding Road Theater Ensemble chose this play specifically for the Valentine’s Day season. "To my mind, this play is a true romance and is our Valentine to Tucson audiences," says director Lesley Abrams.
Originally produced Off-Broadway in 1987, Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune enjoyed a Broadway revival in 2002. The film version, written by Terrence McNally and released in 1991, focused more on the dramatic elements of the play. Director Lesley Abrams says, "I felt the film version was too poignant, too serious. I read the play as a classic romantic comedy; a comic duet of sorts between a risk-taker and a risk-avoider complete with a soundtrack of beautiful, sentimental music."
Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune* previews on Thursday, February 11, opens Friday February 12, with evening performances on February 13, 19, 20, 26 and 27, and Sunday matinees on February 14, 21 and 28. All evening shows are at 7:30 p.m.; matinees are at 2 p.m. Tickets cost $18, with group, student, senior and theater artist discounts available for $15. There is also a special Valentine’s Day offer of two tickets for $20. Reservations can be made by calling 520-882-5502. No credit card sales are available, cash and check only. The Scottish Rite Cathedral is located at 160 S. Scott Ave., Tucson.
*This production contains adult language and sexual situations.
Art: http://www.pipeline.com/~drmemory/F&JPostcardFinal.pdf
Backgrounder:
Backgrounder:
Frankie & Johnnie in the Clair de Lune:
February 11-28, 2010, Scottish Rite Cathedral, 160 S. Scott Ave., Tucson
A sexy, romantic comedy about falling fearlessly—and fearfully—in love.
Originally produced Off-Broadway in 1987, Frankie & Johnnie in the Clair de Lune enjoyed a Broadway revival in 2002. It is a sexy, romantic comedy about falling fearlessly—and fearfully—in love. The film version, written by Terrence McNally and released in 1991, focused more on the dramatic elements of the play.
Director Lesley Abrams says, "I felt the film version was too poignant, too serious. I read the play as a classic romantic comedy; a comic duet of sorts between a risk-taker and a risk-avoider complete with a soundtrack of beautiful, sentimental music."
Actors as diverse as Kathy Bates, Stanley Tucci, Edie Falco, Rosie Perez, Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino have tackled the roles of Frankie & Johnny. This production features Amy Erbe and Terry Erbe, who, with Abrams, are among the founding members of Winding Road Theater Ensemble.
Abrams says, "Certainly casting a married couple has its share of advantages and challenges. While they are very comfortable with the physical intimacy required in the play, are they able to portray people who don't know each other, who are just beginning to find one another? Given the combined force of Amy and Terry's talents, I am confident it will be done."
While other productions have featured nudity throughout the first act of the play, this one will not. "I have seen nudity work very well onstage—most notably in the Broadway production of McNally's Love! Valor! Compassion!—but I felt it would be an unnecessary distraction here," says Abrams. "While the nudity tells us something about the characters' willingness to be vulnerable with one another, it also seems to me that it comes too early in the play." This production contains adult language and sexual situations.
Winding Road Theater Ensemble chose this play specifically for the Valentine Day season. "To my mind, this play is a true romance and is our Valentine to Tucson audiences," says Abrams.
Playwright:
Growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas, playwright Terrence McNally escaped a lonely childhood by immersing himself in radio dramas such as The Green Hornet and live-broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera. He even constructed a miniature model of the opera and manipulated scenes on the stage that, he later recalled, "was more real than life." More than two-dozen plays—and stages—later, a larger than life-size career has emerged from McNally’s early imaginings. He is the author of such renowned plays as Love! Valor! Compassion! (1994), Master Class (1995), Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991) as well as the book for musicals Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992) and Ragtime (1996). In addition, he wrote the screenplay for the adaptation of his play Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune.
Over the years, McNally’s plays have been described as satiric and darkly comic, but more recently they have also come to be appreciated as compassionate, lyrical, and life affirming. As actress Swoosie Kurtz, who has appeared in his plays, has said, "He shapes the opera of the human heart." In addition to two Tony Awards for Best Play, McNally has also been the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships and numerous OBIE awards. He lives in New York City.
Cast:
Amy Erbe relocated to Tucson in 1996 from New Jersey. Some of her favorite roles here in Arizona include Artie in Eleemosynary, Curley’s Wife in Of Mice and Men, Jennet Humphrey in The Woman in Black, Chantal in The Balcony, Miss O’Callahan in The Dead, Aldonza in Man of La Mancha, Witch in Into the Woods, Kathy in The Last Five Years. She has been privileged to cast in two of Toni Press-Coffman’s brilliant plays, Holy Spirit on Grand Avenue (Celeste) and New House, New Dog (Suzanne). Amy performed Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the TFACTE Chamber Orchestra and also served as vocal director for the Catalina Foothills High School production of A Chorus Line.
Terry Erbe is in his twenty-first year as a theatre teacher and in his tenth year at Catalina Foothills High School, where he has directed twenty-eight plays and produced another thirty student-directed plays. Terry works frequently in the Tucson area as an actor and director. Some of Terry’s most notable acting roles include George in Of Mice and Men for Beowulf Alley, the Tucson premieres of Toni Press-Coffman’s New House, New Dog (as Jackson) and That Slut (as Ray), David in Social Security at Live Theatre Workshop, and ensemble roles in The Exonerated and Leaving Iowa for the Invisible Theatre. Some of Terry’s recent directing credits include Prelude to a Kiss and A Perfect Ganesh at Live Theatre Workshop, The Woman in Black at Beowulf Alley, The Last Five Years for Timberwolf Productions, Summer and Smoke for Pima Community College and Love! Valor! Compassion! for Panoramic Productions.
Director:
Lesley Abrams is co-founder of the LaughingStock Comedy Company, which specializes in creating customized-improvised comedy for business audiences nationwide. Her first one-person show, Where There’s Smoke, is an autobiographical serio-comedy about how a house fire restored her sense of perspective. She toured that show throughout New England and Florida. Locally, she has appeared in productions of Dorothy Parker’s Last Call (which she wrote and performed), Immortal Longings, Doubt, New House New Dog, Steel Magnolias, Noises Off, Sister Mary Ignatius, The Trojan Women and Frozen, for which she won an Arizona Daily Star “Mac” award. She is a founding member of Winding Road Theatre Ensemble.
Mission Statement:
Winding Road Theater is an Ensemble of theater artists whose mission is to tell dynamic, theatrical stories that illuminate the human condition and celebrate the theatre’s power to entertain us, move us and bring us joy. Guided by the principle that proscription is the enemy of imagination, we produce plays classic and new, traditional and unconventional, comic and tragic, and tell stories from as many perspectives as we are fortunate to discover.
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