Erin Darke, Mia Dillon and Keir Dullea Join Christopher Lloyd in POUND Reading in NYC

Actress Erin Darke (Good Girls Revolt, Love & Mercy, Don't Think Twice), actress/director Mia Dillion (Money Pit, All Good Things) and Keir Dullea (2001: A Space Odyssey) are set to join multi-award winner Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future trilogy) in a stage reading of POUND by playwright Sean O'Leary on Monday, September 18th at 7pm at The Vineyard Theatre (108 East 15th Street).

Presented by Triumvirate Artists, the "one-night-only" reading of Pound is directed by Kathleen Butler, who is also producing with partners John Essay and Daniel Butler.

Darke joins as Mary Polley, a young psychiatrist who aspires to help the man who has been labeled "incurable." Mia Dillon takes on the role of Nurse Priscomb with Keir Dullea as Archibald MacLeash.

The play Pound challenges us with questions about whether words can be as powerful as actions, whether revenge can be just, and, ultimately, whether sanity is possible when we're made to see the world as it is and not as we would have it.

During World War II the American poet, Ezra Pound, made propaganda broadcasts for Mussolini's fascist government. Arrested and charged with treason Pound was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial and remanded to the custody of St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital, where he would remain from 1945 until 1958 when the indictment was dismissed and he was released.

Near the end of his stay, this aggressive and manipulative man, who dominated St. Elizabeths much as he had the literary world in the first half of the 20th century, suddenly retreated into an emotional shell and, eventually, "The Great Silence" - a period of despair and seclusion from which he never fully recovered. The play, Pound, imagines what might have happened in those last days at St. Elizabeths to irreversibly change the character of Ezra Pound.

At rise the overbearing, 73-year-old Pound is confronted by Mary Polley, a young psychiatrist who aspires to help the man who has been labeled "incurable". Pound dismisses her, as he has so many psychiatrists, but when he learns of his imminent release, he experiences an inexplicable dread that drives him to Mary for help.

Mary embarks on a course of treatment that, at first, seems merely peculiar and perhaps justified given the short time in which she must work. But, soon her techniques become disturbing, visiting extreme guilt upon Pound for a lifetime of manipulation and abuse. Then, after reducing Pound to almost childlike vulnerability, Mary reveals her true purpose - revenge against the man whose radio broadcasts during the war demonized Jews and encouraged "a purge" - a purge that consumed, among others, Mary's parents.