Weston Playhouse Theatre Company's THE OTHER PLACE Opens 7/23

Each season, Weston Playhouse Theatre Company lives up to the challenge of producing a schedule that appeals to its wide-ranging and devoted audience. Family-friendly events, blockbuster musicals, and masterworks are off-set by critically-acclaimed contemporary plays making waves off and on Broadway. American playwright Sharr White has crafted one of these hot, new works. His witty, complex, and award-winning drama The Other Place opens July 23 on Weston's intimate OtherStages.

The show first premiered off Broadway in 2012 and took just one year to make the big time. Directed by Joe Mantello, the 2013 Broadway production featured Laurie Metcalf in the leading role, a performance for which she garnered an Obie Award and a Tony nomination. The play can be described as a bit of a mystery. It's a story about a smart woman, perhaps the world's smartest: Juliana Smithton -- successful neurologist, mother of one, and recent divorcée. Her life, at the start, seems to be coming unhinged.

Weston's production, directed by Tim Fort, features a cast of four extraordinary performers, including Broadway and Weston veterans, Susan Haefner and David Bonanno. Bonanno and Haefner will be reprising the roles of Juliana and Ian, having appeared together in last year's Shaker Bridge Theatre production. The Shaker Bridge run of The Other Place closed to rave reviews, and Haefner's performance as "Juliana" was described as "virtuoso."

Bonanno and Haefner are joined by Joe Osheroff, who has appeared in five Weston seasons, and Tracy Michailidis, who was seen in Weston's productions of The Mikado and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Director Fort says he's thrilled to be collaborating with these four actors. "There is so much positive history among us that solving the mysteries of this complicated play really becomes a conversation among close friends."

Fort seems thrilled to bring such a provocative piece to Weston. "With The Other Place we have the right play, cast, and venue to enable us to present something special to our regulars while also expanding our theatrical community."

If you're game for a touching and witty play that embraces the ideas of truth and self-discovery, The Other Place is for you. It's cerebral and endearing at once with a complexity that translates easily thanks to smartly cast, creative handling.

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