A Noise Within Announces 2013-2014 Season
By: Kelsey Denette May. 23, 2013
A Noise Within, led by Producing Artistic Directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, presents its third season of classic plays in its new Pasadena home, beginning September 7, 2013 with Pericles, Prince of Tyre by William Shakespeare, followed by The Guardsman by Ferenc Molnár, Endgame by Samuel Beckett, Tartuffe by Molière, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, and concluding with Come Back, Little Sheba by William Inge.
This season the plays are thematically tied by the tireless search to find that which has been lost. Julia Rodriguez Elliott said, "Much of life is about managing loss - and the search to find what we perceive we have lost: the longing for spent youth, the sadness for the unyielding search for a lost child. Sometimes it is re-discovery - the thrill of a romance, a self-deception of great entitlement, or finding a key to a locked mind. We've chosen these stories because they all explore values we find precious - love lost, love found, meaning lost and meaning found."
The season also includes the return of A Noise Within's holiday tradition of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, adapted for the stage by Geoff Elliott. Subscription tickets are available by calling 626.356.3100 ext. 1, visiting anoisewithin.org, or by emailing boxoffice@anoisewithin.orgThe seven plays of the 2013-2014 season of A Noise Within
This romantic fairy-tale (1607) is an action-packed, tempest-tossed hero's quest: a magical mystery tour spanning decades and continents. To win the hand of a princess, Pericles must answer a riddle placed to him by King Antiochus; all answers present their own perils, so he chooses another solution - to go on a long ocean voyage replete with the everyday experiences of theatrical ocean journey -- storms, famines, pirates abducting children, births and burials at sea, attempted waking of the dead who are still alive, and even visits to a brothel. In the end, it culminates in one of the most joyful reunions - this is considered a comedy after all, but then so is The Tempest itself -- in the Shakespearean canon. The Guardsman by Ferenc Molnár (September 28 - November 30, 2013)
A Hungarian stage star, terrified that his recent marriage is already on the rocks, concocts a scheme meant to invigorate the passions of his starlet wife. His absurd plan - starting with disguising himself as a guardsman (with a thick accent, no less) -- unleashes a series of hilariously unintended consequences in Molnar's comic game of love and marriage. The Guardsman (1910) was one of Molnár's most known plays; its film version (1931) starred Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Molnár is also known for Liliom, the basis for Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, and The Good Fairy, adapted to film by Preston Sturges.
Considered by many to be Nobel Prize recipient Samuel Beckett's greatest single work, Endgame (1957) mixes beauty, vitality, and wry humor in a devastating distillation of the human condition. Nell in the play says, "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness." Most great comedians find us helpless with laughter over unhappiness. "Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more." Beckett, a chess devotee, named the play from the last part of a chess game, after most of the pieces have been eliminated. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, adapted for the stage by Geoff Elliott (December 7-22, 2013) Tartuffe by Molière (February 15 - May 24, 2014)
A fox is in the hen house; a rat is in the cellar; a snake is in the grass -- oh, Monsieur Tartuffe! The world's most famous Scoundrel's story, Tartuffe (1664) is comic genius Molière's tale of naiveté, religious hypocrisy, and the triumphant victory of good over evil-and all in 1,962 twelve-syllable lines of rhyming couplets! Like Xerox and Keds, the title character became an English and French noun - a "tartuffe" (tär?to?of) is a religious hypocrite, or a hypocritical pretender to excellence of any kind. And like many sharp plays, the French Roman Catholic Church, upper-class French society, and the French mafia -- were publically offended; but when the Archbishop of Paris issued an edict threatening excommunication for anyone who watched, performed - or even read the play - the run ended. But then the Archbishop didn't know anything about revivals! The profound Russian theatrical legend Constantin Stanislavski was working on a production when he died. Macbeth by William Shakespeare (March 8 - May 11, 2014)
Something Wicked This Way Comes! In a world rife with superstition and witchcraft, the Bard's insatiable Scottish couple leads us down a traitorous and blood-soaked road to the throne only to learn that power attained through murderous greed is enshrouded with the sleepless shriek of a guilty conscience. One of the most powerful character studies in all of literature, Macbeth (1606) loses everything that gives meaning and purpose to life before losing his life itself. This is the first time that A Noise Within has presented Macbeth in twelve years. Come Back, Little Sheba by William Inge (March 29 - May 17, 2014)
At a time when the pace of American life was not so rapid, a middle-aged couple, awash in what-ifs and drifting apart, takes in a young, vivacious college boarder, creating an explosive catalyst for change. Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times said, "Inge writes with a relentless frankness and compassion that are deeply affecting." Playwright William Inge knew the meaning of repression and loss. In 1947 he joined Alcoholics Anonymous, where he met "Lola," who became the basis of Come Back, Little Sheba (1950). Shirley Booth came to her greatest acclaim as an actress winning both the Tony Award and an Academy Award for Best Actress for this role. His other plays include Bus Stop, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and Picnic, which won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. In the early seventies, after becoming one of America's greatest and most known playwrights, Inge fell into a deep depression, having lost faith in his writing abilities, and committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in 1973 at the age of 60. After half a century, Inge's contemporary masterpiece remains compelling and deeply resonate, as does the playwright himself, a closeted homosexual, whose final play The Last Pad (1972) featured an openly gay character.
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