Metropolitan Playhouse Announces BOTH YOUR HOUSES, Opening 9/22

Tickets are $25 general; $20 students/seniors; $10 children, and may be purchased at www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/tickets or 212 995 5302.

When freshman representative from Nevada, Alan McClean, joins the House Appropriations committee, he is shocked to find business as usual depends on backscratching, graft, and plain thievery. His solution is to freight a vital bill with so much pork it will sink under the load and expose the whole corrupt system, risking his own career and the reputation of a much admired, but ultimately compromised silverback in the party. But even so, the DC novice is not ready for consequences he invites.  A fast-paced, quick witted, and trenchantly funny political satire, Both Your Houses hits awfully close to home this election year.

Both Your Houses premiered at the Royale in 1933 in a Theatre Guilde Production that ran 72 performances.  A satire of the Hoover administration, and notably the construction of the Boulder (later renamed Hoover) Dam, the play did not actually reach the stage until Roosevelt was in office--but served as just as satisfying an indictment of the congress in session.  The play met warm reviews and received The Pulitzer Prize in drama for the year. The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) included the play in its reading series in 2005. Metropolitan knows of no New York stage revivals.

James Maxwell Anderson (1888 - 1959), born in Northwest Pennsylvania, took his BA in English Literature at University of North Dakota and an M.A. in English from Stanford. Until 1924, he worked variously as a high school and college teacher, and as a journalist for both local papers and national publications, including The New Republic.

The run of his first play, in verse, White Desert (1923) was short lived, but it caught the attention of critic Laurence Stallings, and the two collaborated on 1924's prose comedy What Price Glory?  This cynically unromantic picture of soldiers in WWI launched Anderson's extremely successful career in writing plays of literary merit and social consciousness. His next was the popular disection of a marriage, Saturday's Children (1927). He returned to verse with successful historical dramasElizabeth the Queen (1930) and Mary of Scotland (1933), and then in Winterset (1935), inspired by the Sacco and Vanzetti trials, and High Tor (1936), about a battle over quarrying on the Hudson River palisades, both of which earned him New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. Other works include Knickerbocker Holiday (1938 with Kurt Weill), satirizing FDR and his New Deal legislation;Key Largo (1939); The Eve of St. Mark (1942); Joan of Lorraine (1946); Anne of the Thousand Days(1948); Lost in the Stars (1949 - scored by Weill); and The Bad Seed (1954) adapted from William March's novel.  Additionally, he adapted many works of his own or others into successful screen plays, including Death Takes a Holiday, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Joan of Arc (with Ingrid Bergman).
Additional awards include a Gold Medal in Drama from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and honorary doctorates from Columbia University of North Dakota.
Following a stroke, Anderson died in Stamford, CT, at age 70.

Both Your Houses is directed by  Michael Hardart, whose recent productions include Back Stagecritcs' picks  Deep Are the Roots, The Great Divide, and It Pays to Advertise, as well as the popularUnder the Gaslight. The production stars Brad Makarowski as upstart congressman Alan McClean,Kelly King (The House of Mirth) as Appropriations Chair Simeon Gray, Warren Katz as party lion Solomon Ftizmaurice, and Jenelle Sosa as the great man's daughter torn between allegiances. The cast is completed by John Blaylock, Jonathan Cantor, Matt W. Cody, Ray Crisara (The Great Divide),Teresa Kelsey (Deep Are the Roots, The House of Mirth), Matt Gibson, Lianne Kressin,David Lavine, and Robert Lee Taylor.  Lighting Design by Christopher Weston (The House of Mirth, Deep Are the Roots, The Jazz Singer, From Rags to Riches, One-Third of a Nation, Uncle Tom's Cabin) and Costumes by Shana R. Goldberger

Metropolitan Playhouse is now in its 21st season, devoted to The American Dream in American theater and culture.  The Playhouse explores America’s theatrical heritage through forgotten plays of the past and new plays of American historical and cultural moment. Called an “indispensable East Village institution” by nytheatre.com and "invaluable" by Back Stage, Metropolitan has earned accolades from The New York Times, and received a 2011 OBIE Grant from The Village Voice for its ongoing productions that illuminate who we are by revealing where we have come from. Other awards include nominations for 5 NYIT Awards in 2010 (The Return of Peter Grimm; Frank Anderson winner for lead actor) and 5 more in 2012 (The House of Mirth).  Recent productions include The House of MIrth, Deep Are the Roots, The Jazz Singer, From Rags to Riches, One-Third of a Nation, The Great Divide, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Drunkard, Dodsworth, NYIT award winningThe Return of Peter Grimm, as well as the Alphabet City and East Village Chronicles series.