The Production Company Opens Lanford Wilson’s ANGELS FALL, 11/23

Artistic Directors August Viverito and T L Kolman have announced the Los Angeles return of Lanford Wilson's ANGELS FALL. This heartwarming drama opens November 23rd for a five week run at the company's The Lex Theatre, 6760 Lexington Ave., Hollywood, CA 90038.

"No cause for alarm," bellows the helicopter's loudspeaker, alerting rural New Mexico to the latest mishap at one of its various nuclear-energy facilities. The play presents six characters trapped in a Catholic mission church on a desolate Indian reservation. They're stuck there because the government has closed the roads. Through his witty and probing dialogue, playwright Wilson examines meaty questions that resonate on a personal as well as philosophical level. At its core, the play is about truth vs. fiction. What are the fabrications we tell ourselves or accept from others? And where exactly does the truth lie?

Among the characters are an Ivy League professor and his wife, headed for a sanitarium where he will receive treatment for what his college's board thought was possibly psychotic behavior, but what we might see as his awakening to an alternative world view. Also trapped at the church are a wise and sophisticated artist's widow and her neurotic tennis player boy toy, en route to one of his important matches in California. Welcoming these stranded four is a hyperactive priest, filled with goodness but with a view of the truth that may not be fair. He's using every trick in his repertoire to make a gifted young Native American doctor stay on the reservation and care for his people instead of taking a highly sought-after research position at a prestigious research facility.

When the play was first produced in 1982, fears of the bomb and nuclear energy were foremost in people's minds. Today, when the play speaks of worshipping energy, one immediately thinks of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico and the Keystone Pipeline. Epiphanies are to be found, but redemption may yet be a bit out of reach.

TheProdCo came upon this project when Director Alex Egan shared that he was fortunate to have spent his internship at NYC's famed Circle Repertory Company while Lanford Wilson work-shopped the play's Broadway production which received a Tony nomination for 'Best Play'. Mr. Egan conveyed that one of the fondest memories of that experience was that "Circle Rep was a pretty small space and the green room was directly behind the stage. Mr. Wilson would sit there during the show listening to the dialogue and take notes - making changes - listening for laughs. Nurturing cast and crew and perfecting his masterful work."

The ensemble features the considerable talents of Danielle Doyen, Gabe Fonseca, Carl J. Johnson, Penny Peyser, Michael Sanchez, & Stewart Skelton. Assistant direction is by Tricia Pierce, Set Design and Lighting by August Viverito, Sound Design by TwoLips Studios, and Stage Management is by Jason Britt.

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