Jim Brochu's ZERO HOUR is this year's recipient of the 2010 Drama Desk Award for Best Solo Show.
ZERO HOUR, Jim Brochu's award-winning play about the life of theatre legend Zero Mostel made its Off-Broadway premiere at Theatre at Saint Clement's Saturday, November 14th. Produced by Kurt Peterson and Edmund Gaynes in association with The Peccadillo Theater Company, the show had its Opening Night on Sunday, November 22nd at 7 p.m. The limited engagement of ZERO HOUR continued through January 31st.
Three-time Academy Award nominee Piper Laurie directs the production which has played enormously successful engagements in Washington DC, San Francisco, Houston, and a 16-week sold-out run in South Florida which garnered Brochu the 2009 Carbonell Award as Best Actor in a Play. ZERO HOUR, originally produced in Los Angeles, received the LA Stage Ovation Award for Best New Play.
Starring Jim Brochu as Zero Mostel, ZERO HOUR is set at Mostel's West 28th Street painting studio where a naïve reporter attempts to interview the famously volatile actor, prompting an explosion of memory, humor, outrage, and juicy backstage lore. It is July 1977 and the actor is giving his final interview before leaving for the pre-Broadway tryout of The Merchant in Philadelphia. Mostel only played one performance as Shylock before his sudden death at the age of 62.
ZERO HOUR traces Mostel's early days growing up on the Lower East Side as the son of Orthodox Jewish immigrant parents, through his rise as a stand-up comedian, from the Borscht Belt to Manhattan's most exclusive supper clubs, and from the devastation of the blacklist to his greatest Broadway triumphs, most notably as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and working through his love-hate relationship with Jerome Robbins.
