Bad Quarto Productions' ANNA KARENINA LIVES Opens This Week

Bad Quarto Productions, a theatre company specializing in performing modern theatre using Shakespearean staging techniques, will open it's latest production: Anna Karenina Lives!, a new vaudeville-style musical comedy by Germaine Shames, this October 21st and 22nd at 353 W. 48th St. in Midtown Manhattan.

Written by Germaine Shames, and previously performed as part of the Invisible Theatre's 2016 season, Anna Karenina Lives! is a musical comedy romp through time and space that sees vaudeville star Mae West team up with Sophia Tolstoy, widow to the famous novelist, to try to save Anna Karenina from being crushed by the stifling patriarchal forces of Tzarist Russia. Free love and vaudeville are their weapons of choice as Sophia tries to make up for past regrets, and Mae West tries to make sure the 20th century follows her example.

Anna Karenina Lives! features Brigette Estola (Up Above & All Around, New York Theatre Festival's Summerfest) as Mae West, Kirsten Egenes (Charles and Diana: The Musical, Morningside Players) as Sophia Tolstoy, Rachel Marie Kemp (Baskerville, Pendragon Theatre) as Anna Karenina, and James Overton (The Life and Death of Jack Straw: A Notable Rebel, Bad Quarto Productions) as Vronsky and Karenin. Anna Karenina Lives! is directed by Bad Quarto Productions Artistic Director Tony Tambasco (Hamlet: The First Quarto), with musical direction by Overton, costumes by Joanne Famiglietti (Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto, Bad Quarto Productions) and Choreography by Mike Canestraro (My Fair Lady, Plaza Theatricals).

Bad Quarto Productions will present the play using its signature style of combining modern text work with Shakespearean staging conditions to illuminate modern works. Bad Quarto Productions' performances combine detailed understanding of language with the liveliness of improv to deliver a Shakespearean play-going experience.

Anna Karenina LIves! will play at Studios 353 (353 W. 48th St., New York) on the following days and times:

Saturday. October 21st: 2 PM
Saturday. October 21st: 8 PM
Sunday. October 22nd: 2 PM

The house opens 20 minutes before curtain times. Anna Karenina Lives! is approximately 70 minutes long, and will be performed without an intermission.

Tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets at http://aklives.bpt.me/. For more information please visit Bad Quarto Productions online at http://www.BadQuarto.org. Questions may be directed to info@badquarto.org, or by phone at (646) 598-2128 between 10 AM and 6 PM.

About Bad Quarto Productions: Bad Quarto Productions was founded in 2010 to explore the rarely performed plays of Shakespeare's time, and the ways in which Shakespeare's staging techniques can inform modern theatrical productions. The company has produced the earliest printed version of Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of a Shrew ("a shrew" not "the shrew"); the first performance of The Merry Devil of Edmonton in the modern era; The Ballad of Dido, an original musical developed using Shakespearean techniques, and What, Lamb! What, Ladybird! a new play about Juliet's continuing relevance. Bad Quarto Productions continues to look for new ways of bridging the gap between Shakespeare's theatre and the Modern Stage.

Photo by James M. Smith