Nancy E. Carroll Leads SpeakEasy Stage's New England Premiere of MOTHERS & SONS, Running Now thru 6/6

From tonight, May 8 to June 6, 2015, SpeakEasy Stage Company will present the New England Premiere of MOTHERS & SONS, a timely and touching new play about love, loss, and family, written by Terrence McNally.

A 2014 Tony Nominee for Best Play, this acclaimed drama follows Dallas matriarch Katharine Gerard as she pays a surprise visit to her late son's former partner Cal, who is now married to another man and raising a young son. Still coping with loss and her own unresolved anger, Katharine is challenged by Cal to consider not only the life her son might have led, but also how society has changed around her. (Katharine and Cal are characters Mr.McNally first introduced in his 1988 ten-minute play Andre's Mother, which was turned into a 1990 Emmy Award-winning TV movie.)

Terrence McNally is a recipient of the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award and has won four Tony Awards: one each for his plays Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and one each for his musical books for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and, in 1996, was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. He currently has two shows on Broadway: the hit comedy It's Only a Play and the Chita Rivera musical The Visit.

SpeakEasy Founder and Producing Artistic Director Paul Daigneault will direct the New England premiere of MOTHERS & SONS. Mr. Daigneault won a Norton Award in 2008 for his direction of McNally's play Some Men. His other recent SpeakEasy directing credits include productions of Big Fish, The Color Purple, In the Heights, and Next to Normal.

Broadway veteran and three-time Norton Award-winner Nancy E. Carroll will play Katharine. Michael Kaye, Nile Hawver, and Liam Lurker round out the Boston cast.

The design team is Erik D. Diaz (scenic), Charles Schoonmaker (costumes), Jeff Adelberg (lighting), and David Remedios (sound).

MOTHERS & SONS will run for five weeks, from May 8 through June 6, in the Roberts Studio Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street in Boston's South End. Ticket prices start at $25, with discounts for students, seniors, and persons age 25 and under. For tickets or more information, the public is invited to call the box office at 617.933.8600 or visit www.SpeakEasyStage.com.

ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM:

TERRENCE MCNALLY (Playwright) was elected to the Theater Hall of Fame in 1996 and was awarded the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. He is the winner of four Tony Awards: one each for his plays Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and one each for the books for the musicals Ragtime and Kiss of the Spiderwoman. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Mr. McNally is currently represented on Broadway by the hit comedy It's Only a Play and by the musical The Visit, for which he wrote the book. Other plays include Golden Age; And Away We Go; Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune; Lips Together, Teeth Apart; The Lisbon Traviata; Corpus Christi; The Ritz; Some Men; A Perfect Ganesh; Bad Habits; The Stendhal Syndrome; Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams; Deuce; and Unusual Acts of Devotion. He has also written the books for the musicals The Full Monty and A Man of No Importance, and the libretto for the opera Dead Man Walking, which had its premiere at San Francisco Opera. His newest opera, Great Scott, will premiere at Dallas Opera in the fall of 2015. Mr. McNally has also written a number of TV scripts, including Andre's Mother for which he won an Emmy Award.

PAUL DAIGNEAULT (Director/Producing Artistic Director) was the recipient of the 2014 Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence by the Boston Theater Critics Association. Since founding SpeakEasy in 1992, he has produced over 100 Boston premieres. SpeakEasy directing highlights include Big Fish; The Color Purple; In the Heights; Xanadu; Next to Normal; Nine; Body Awareness; The Great American Trailer Park Musical; [title of show]; The Savannah Disputation; Jerry Springer - The Opera; The New Century; Some Men; Zanna, Don't!; Parade (2008 Elliot Norton Award - Outstanding Director, Midsize Company); Almost, Maine; Caroline, or Change; Take Me Out; Company; A Man of No Importance (co-production Súgán); Bat Boy: The Musical (2003 Elliot Norton Award - Outstanding Director, Small Company); Passion; A New Brain; Violet; Songs for a New World; Floyd Collins; Jeffrey; and Love! Valour! Compassion!. Regional credits: Grand Hotel and Nine (The Boston Conservatory and Cincinnati Conservatory of Music); Rent, City of Angels, Sunday in the Park with George, Merrily We Roll Along (The Boston Conservatory); Into the Woods, Urinetown, and Blue Window (Boston College). Paul is on the faculty at The Boston Conservatory where he teaches musical theater and directing. He was also honored in 2007 with the Boston College Arts Council's Alumni Award for Distinguished Achievement, and served as the 2011-2012 Rev. J. Donald Monan S.J. Professor in Theatre Arts. Outside the theatre, Paul serves on the Board of the ICU Patient & Family Council at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

ABOUT THE CAST:

NANCY E. CARROLL (Katharine Gerard) returns to SpeakEasy, where she has appeared in Other Desert Cities, The Savannah Disputation, The Women, Company, and A Man Of No Importance. She spent a season touring with the Druid Theatre of Galway appearing as Mammy in The Cripple of Inishmaan (US/Ireland) and the Old Woman in Big Maggie (Ireland).Broadway: Present Laughter. Off Broadway: Balancing Act. Regional: The Seagull; Rapture, Blister, Burn; Good People; Luck of the Irish; Prelude to a Kiss; Brendan; She Loves Me; The Rose Tattoo; Dead End (Huntington Theatre); Our Town, She Loves Me (Williamstown); Trad (Tir Na); 4000 Miles, North Shore Fish, Breath of Life, Doubt, Happy Days, My Old Lady, Collected Stories (Gloucester Stage); The Year of Magical Thinking, The Glass Menagerie (Lyric Stage); The Clean House, Frozen, Sweeney Todd, Kindertransport (New Repertory Theatre); Bailegangaire (Súgán Theatre); Homebody/Kabul (Boston Theatre Works); Humble Boy, Hamlet, The Winter's Tale (Publick Theatre); Auntie and Me (Merrimack Rep); The Pain & The Itch (Company One); Buried Child, The Unexpected Man (Nora Theatre). She received Elliot Norton Awards for her performances as Miss Erickson in Present Laughter, the Woman in Brendan, and Mommo in Bailegangaire. Recent TV/film credits include HBO's Olive Kitteridge, Spotlight for Dreamworks, and the upcoming Woody Allen film An Irrational Man.

NILE HAWVER (Will Ogden) is thrilled to be making his SpeakEasy debut! New England credits: Huntington Theatre, Central Square Theater, Commonwealth Shakespeare, Ocean State Theatre. Regional: Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. BFA: University of Rhode Island. MFA: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Thanks to SpeakEasy for his first Equity production, and thanks to Maggie for helping him learn all his lines. www.nilehawver.com. Also check out his photography at www.nilescottshots.com.

MICHAEL KAYE (Cal Porter) is thrilled to return to SpeakEasy, having previously appeared in Clybourne Park. Some of Michael's regional theatre credits include roles with the Huntington Theatre, Olney Theatre Center, Lyric Stage, New Repertory Theatre, Boston Playwrights' Theatre, and Boston Center for American Performance. He was most recently seen in the BPT's production of Uncle Jack. Michael is an Assistant Professor of Acting at The Boston University School of Theatre, where he received both a BFA in Acting and MFA in Theatre Education.

LIAM LURKER (Bud) is pleased to make his SpeakEasy debut in Mothers & Sons. He started his stage career with Boston Ballet in the World Premiere of choreographer Jorma Elo's Awake Only in the 2012 Fall Program. He has also performed in three productions of Boston Ballet's The Nutcracker. Liam began his theatre training under actor and instructor Danny Bolton at Wheelock Family Theatre in Boston. He has also had musical and stage performance training with Cambridge Revels, and has studied acting with Boston Casting.

Pictured: Nile Hawver, Nancy E. Carroll, Michael Kaye, and Liam Lurker (front) in rehearsal for MOTHERS & SONS. Photo by Glenn Perry.

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