St. Ann's Warehouse welcomes back Kneehigh Theatre and director Emma Rice for the New York Premiere of Tristan & Yseult, the acclaimed production that catapulted the Cornwall-based company onto the national stage. In her adaptation of the epic Cornish drama, Rice employs Kneehigh's signature blend of high theatrics-performances alternately poignant and comic, evocative spectacle, and gorgeous live music-to reimagine the tale of forbidden desires, broken hearts and the agony of choosing one love over another. Reviewing the production last year, The Guardian wrote, "If this show doesn't make you fall in love with theatre, there's no potion on Earth that can help you."
Performances of Tristan and Yesult will take place November 16 - December 18 at St. Ann's Warehouse (29 Jay Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn). Critics are welcome as of November 21 at 8pm for an official opening on November 24. Tickets start at $40 and are available now at
www.stannswarehouse.org or
718.254.8779. The production runs at 2:15 with a 15-minute intermission.
St. Ann's Warehouse has been Kneehigh's New York home since 2009, when St. Ann's premiered director
Emma Rice's adaptation of
Noël Coward's Brief Encounter. The production went on to a successful Broadway run at Studio 54. In 2010, the company returned to St. Ann's with The Red Shoes, an adaptation of the
Hans Christian Andersen tale, and then again in 2012 with The Wild Bride, an adaptation of the Grimm Brothers fairy tale The Handless Maiden that Charles Isherwood of The New York Times described as "bewitching."
Tristan & Yseult is classic Kneehigh. Reviewing the show at Berkeley Rep last year, The San Francisco Chronicle described it as "enchantingly vital," and wrote that it is "filled with all the remarkably inventive, eye-catching theatricality we've come to expect from [Kneehigh]." Rice's adaptation, written by Carl Grose and Anna Maria Murphy, approaches the fable from a new perspective: that of a chorus of the "Unloved," who guide the audience through the narrative with a heightened mix of glee and woe.
The cast-including Dom Marsh (Tristan), Mike Shepherd (King Mark),
Hannah Vassallo (Yseult), Kirsty Woodward (Whitehands),
Damon Daunno (Frocin),
Niall Ashdown (Brangian), Robert Luckay (Lovespotter, Brute) and Tom Jackson Greaves (Lovespotter, Brute)-and a live band including
Stu Barker, Lizzy Westcott, Justin Radford and Pat Moran, perform an original score by Barker, Kneehigh's longtime composer. The designers
Bill Mitchell (sets),
Malcolm Rippeth (lighting) and
Gregory Clarke (sound) carry out the "ingenious story-theater stagecraft" The New York Times has ascribed to the company.
Of Tristan & Yseult,
Emma Rice says, "There is not one person in that audience who doesn't profoundly recognize something in the situation-to love someone that you shouldn't, to betray someone you love, to be betrayed, to be left and, most painful, to be unloved. This suddenly is not an epic tale of grand romantic love, held at arms length from our own experience, but a tender unraveling of love in all its beautiful and painful forms."
