Golden Globe Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated actress Amy Madigan directs the West Coast premiere of a new play by former publicist/talent manager/producer-turned-playwright Neil Koenigsberg. Off the King's Road opens June 27 as a guest production at the Odyssey Theatre.
Tom Bower (Out of the Furnace, Crazy Heart, Pollock, Die Hard 2) stars as retired American businessman
Matt Browne. After the death of his wife, Matt escapes to his favorite city, London, for a week's respite at a small hotel. The five person cast also includes
Casey Kramer, Thaddeus Shafer,
Michael Uribes and Maria Zyrianova.
"I was immediately taken with Matt's character and all the people who get plugged into him," says Madigan. "I love the way the play handles that sense of isolation that sometimes comes with age. How do you go on? But Neil writes with such a great sense of humor, and I responded to that. There are some very poignant moments, but it's also very funny. It hit me on a very gut level."
Off the King's Road premiered in New York at Theater for the New City in 2013, where The New York Times called it "unexpectedly endearing" and Show Business Weekly said "a rich emotional journey that never hits a wrong note." Previously, Koenigsberg had two one-acts produced off-Broadway as part of the Summer Shorts Festival at 59 E. 59 St. Theaters: On A Bench and Fit. The New York Times described On A Bench as "an excellent play... funny and touching... the highlight of the evening." Two years later, the Times praised Fit as "a daffy and diverting nugget." These two plays went on to a 2011 production as a double bill (under the collective title "Attachments") at the Exit Theatre in San Francisco as part of an international fringe festival.
A founding partner of high profile entertainment public relations company PMK, Koenigsberg sold his interest in the company after 11 years to become a talent manager and film producer, involved with projects such as Pollock, A Walk on the Moon, High Art, American Heart, Hidden in America and The Giver. Most recently, he also acted as a producer on two documentaries:
Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides for American Masters/PBS, and
Tab Hunter Confidential, currently making the rounds of film festivals worldwide after its world premiere at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas this past March. A graduate of Boston University with a BA in Film, Koenigsberg was born and raised in New York and currently divides his time between N.Y.C. and Los Angeles.
Amy Madigan most recently co-starred with husband
Ed Harris in the acclaimed world premiere of
Beth Henley's The Jacksonian at the
Geffen Playhouse in L.A., which went on to a sold-out production with the
New Group in N.Y.C. Both she and Harris will return to New York in 2016 in a revival of
Sam Shepard's Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child, again for the
New Group. Amy's other theater credits include starring in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway; the
Mark Taper Forum's A Lie of the Mind; Manhattan Theater Cub's The Lucky Spot; and L.A. productions of Stevie Wants the Blues, Prairie Avenue and In the Boom Boom Room. Amy produced Susan Emshwiller's Brushstrokes and directed Traveling Bowls of Soup for the MET Theatre, an Oxford Street space where she was a founding member - along with Harris and Tom Bower - and that is still up and running in Hollywood. The actress' film credits include Twice in a Lifetime (Academy Award nomination), Field of Dreams, Uncle Buck, Female Perversions, Streets of Fire and The Dark Half, as well as Pollock, Places in the Heart, Alamo Bay and Gone Baby Gone, the latter four with Harris. Television credits include Roe vs. Wade (Golden Globe Award and Emmy nomination); HBO's Carnivale, The Laramie Project and A Bright Shining Lie;
Robert Altman's The Laundromat; and
Neil LaBute's Ten X Ten for Direct TV. Along with Harris, she co-produced and starred in Zane Gray's Riders of the Purple Sage for TNT.
Set design for the West Coast premiere of Off the King's Road is by Joel Daavid; lighting design is by Christina Schwinn; sound design is by Joseph "Sloe" Slawinski; costume design is by Sharell Martin; properties design is Katherine S. Hunt; graphic design is by Kiff Scholl; and casting is by
Michael Donovan, CSA. The stage manager is Rita Cofield, and Racquel Lehrman, Theatre Planners produces.
Off the King's Road opens for press on June 27 and continues through Aug. 2. Performances take place Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. There will be four preview performances, June 19-26, on the same schedule. Tickets are $25 on Fridays and Sundays and $30 on Saturdays; previews are $15. The Odyssey Theatre is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, 90025. For reservations and information, call
(323) 960-7712 or go to
www.plays411.com/kingsroad.
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