Craig Wright's Orange Flower Water Begins Off-Broadway March 26

By: BWW News Desk Mar. 02, 2005

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Edge Theater Company (Carolyn Cantor, Artistic Director) will present the Off-Broadway premiere of Craig Wright's new play Orange Flower Water, at The Theater for the New City. Performances for Orange Flower Water will begin March 26th and continue through May 8th.

Married couples David & Cathy Larson and Brad & Beth Youngquist live with their children in the relatively peaceful town of Pine City, Minnesota. David and Beth, after years of maintaining a platonic friendship, begin an adulterous affair with disastrous consequences. Through a series of scenes which all take place on or around a single bed, we see the painfully intense unraveling of both marriages and, eventually, the construction of a very fragile but authentic new beginning for everyone concerned. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "Do not be deceived by the lyrical, gently perfumed title of Craig Wright's play. This is a brutally honest drama about marriage and infidelity – one that chronicles the inevitable big damage and ugly fallout engineered by a ceaseless pursuit of selfishness and an unrestrained search for personal happiness. An emotionally and physically lacerating ordeal, it is at once fiercely adult, shrewdly observant, often painfully graphic and most definitely not for the meek." The Chicago Tribune declared Orange Flower Water an "Uncommonly intense and intimate ninety-minute drama…quirky, raw, and nervy…But this is not another play about amoral sexual perversity in the LaBute or Mamet mold. It's a picture of marriage as a vise grip in which the best one can hope for is some velvet handcuffs."

Craig Wright is best known as the Emmy Award-nominated writer for the acclaimed series "Six Feet Under." His other plays include Recent Tragic Events (Woolly Mammoth, Playwrights Horizons), The Pavilion (City Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Globe Theatre), Main Street (Great American History Theatre), Grace (Wooly Mammoth), Molly's Delicious (Arden Theatre), and Melissa Arctic (Folger Theatre).

Carolyn Cantor (recently represented off-Broadway by EVE-olution) will direct Orange Flower Water, featuring Arija Bareikis, Pamela J. Gray, Jason Butler Harner, and Paul Sparks (two-time Drama Desk nominee).

Arija Bareikis most recently appeared in Intimate Apparel (Roundabout Theater), as well as Hotel Universe (Blue Light), The Moment When (Playwrights Horizons), The Last Night of Ballyhoo on Broadway. Film and TV credits include a recurring role on "Crossing Jordan," "American Embassy," "Law & Order," Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and the upcoming film Melinda and Melinda (for Woody Allen).

Pamela J. Grey just finished helping to develop Bone Songs, by Andre Gregory directed by Karen Lordi; other credits include the role of Anne Butley in Simon Gray's Butley starring Nathan Lane directed by Nicholas Martin at he Huntington. In NY she has appeared at The National Theatre, Second Stage, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Women's Project, Actor's Studio Theatre, Theatre for a New Audience, Cucaracha, The Foundry, and Clubbed Thumb. Film and TV credits include Corn, Counterpart, I'll Take You There, The Devil's Advocate, Fish in the Bathtub, Commandments, The 'M' Word, Dogs, Sudden Manhattan, The Stranger, St. Maybe, "Sex in the City," as well as a handful of appearances with in the vast "Law and Order" empire. Pamela is a proud founding member of the innovative theatre and film lab Hip Replacement.

Jason Butler Harner was most recently seen as George Tessman in the acclaimed production of Hedda Gabler at New York Theatre Workshop, directed by Ivo van Hove. Directly prior to that, he garnered much praise for his interpretation of Tom, opposite Sally Fields, in The Glass Menagerie (dir. Gregory Mosher) at the Kennedy Center. A champion of new work, he is very proud to have been involved in a number of American premieres, most notably as Housman in Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love, opposite James Cromwell at A.C.T. in San Francisco (dir. Carey Perloff). Other premieres include An Experiment with an Air Pump (dir. Doug Hughes) at Manhattan Theatre Club, Adam Bock's award winning Five Flights at Rattlestick, Transit of Venus (dir. John Rando) at Berkshire Theatre Festival, Mr. Fox: A Rumination by Bill Irwin at the Signature Theatre (dir. James Houghton), Loved Less (dir. Brian Jucha) with VIA Theatre where he played Erik Menendez to Stephen Belber's Lyle, Anton Dudley's The Lake's End at the Adirondack Theatre Festival (dir. Martha Banta), and Frank McGuinness' deeply moving Observe The Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (dir. Nicholas Martin) at Lincoln Center Theatre. Other New York productions of note include the revival of Crimes of the Heart at Second Stage (dir.Garry Hynes), Juno and the Paycock at the Roundabout (dir. John Crowley), Macbeth with Alec Baldwin and Angela Bassett at The Public (dir. George C. Wolfe), Henry VIII (dir. Mary Zimmerman) at the Delacorte, and Tony Kushner's Hydriotaphia or The Death of DR. Browne (dir. Michael Wilson).

Paul Sparks's recent theater includes Finer Noble Gases, Bug, Blackbird (Drama Desk nomination Best Actor), Take Me Out, Circumference of a Squirrel, Creation of the World and Other Business, Coyote on a Fence (Drama Desk nomination Best Actor), The Later Henry Moss, Complete Female Stage Beauty, Where Everything is Everything, Gun-Shy, Man and Superman, Macbeth Television: "Law and Order," "Law and Order: SVU," "Law and Order: Criminal Intent," "Third Watch," "Trinity," "Guiding Light." Films include: Headspace, Neurotica, A Clean Well-Lighted Place, The Board Room, Transmitter, The Man who Loved Water
Orange Flower Water will have scenic design by David Korins, lighting design by Ben Stanton, costume design by Jenny Mannis, and sound design by Eric Shim.

Carolyn Cantor and David Korins founded Edge Theater Company in 2001 after several years of collaboration at the Williamstown Theater Festival and in New York City. The company is dedicated to producing innovative, challenging work of exceptional quality and imagination with a particular emphasis on new plays. Since its inception, Edge has received a Henry Hewes Award for scenic design from the American Theatre Wing and two Drama Desk nominations. Its production of Adam Rapp's Stone Cold Dead Serious was named one of the 10 Best Off-Broadway Plays of the 2002-2003 Season by The New York Times. Orange Flower Water will be the company's fifth production and fourth New York premiere.

For tickets call (212) 868-4444 or online at http://www.smarttix.com/.

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Craig Wright's Orange Flower Water Begins Off-Broadway March 26

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