A Noise Within (ANW), the acclaimed classical repertory theatre company, offers a free, one-night-only reading of Jack Kirkland's powerful drama TOBACCO ROAD on Tuesday, January 8, 2013, 7 pm, in its new state-of-the-art Pasadena theatre. Directed by Apollo Dukakis and featuring A Noise Within resident artists, this Depression-Era Broadway blockbuster, which exposes the South's social and racial injustices with biting satirical humor, portrays an ignorant, dysfunctional and hardscrabble family of Georgia sharecroppers whose spirits are as depleted as the soil in which they toil. Family patriarch Jeeter Lester and his clan are caught up in the excesses of evangelism and the dark side of lust as they strive just to survive the devastation of poverty. Tobacco Road, based on the novel by Erskine Caldwell, holds the record as the second longest running non-musical in Broadway history.
The reading, for which reservations are recommended, is designed to compliment ANW's production of Frank Galati's adaptation of John Steinbeck's masterpiece Grapes of Wrath, which plays in repertory from February 23 to May 11, 2013 (previews begin February 16.Videos