Theater for a New Audience's MEASURE FOR MEASURE Opens 2/6

Tony winner Jefferson Mays, Elisabeth Waterson, and Rocco Sisto will topline the cast in Theater for a New Audience's Measure for Measure opening February 6. The production, which is being directed by Arin Arbus (who directed the theater company's Othello last season), will play the Duke on 42nd Street from February 6 - March 14.  Opening night is February 14.  

In the Theater for a New Audience's Measure for Measure, government leaders are helpless or hypocritical, and passions are relegated to the whorehouses and the prisons. When the Duke of Vienna departs on a mysterious trip, he delegates power to Angelo, a man of spotless reputation. Puritanical Angelo decides to clamp down on the city's rampant vice by enforcing an antiquated law punishing fornication with death. He makes an example of young Claudio for impregnating his beloved fiancé, and listens to no pleas for mercy. But Angelo's moral fiber is strained to the breaking point when Claudio's beautiful sister Isabella, about to take holy vows, arrives to plead for his life and prompts stirrings in Angelo that confuse and rattle him. Corrupt power confronts ruthless justice, the letter of the law obscures the quality of mercy, and the noblest of spirits must reflect on the basest of appetites in this sly, bawdy, and provocative modern play.

Mays, who won the Tony for best actor in 2004 in addition to other accolades for "I Am My Own Wife," will play the Duke. Waterston, who was Miranda opposite Mandy Patinkin in "The Tempest" at Classic Stage Company in 2008, will portray the heroine nun Isabella. Sisto ("The Bacchae," "Quills") has been cast as Angelo, the two-facEd Moralist judge.

Joining them are two-time Tony nominee Mary Testa and Samara Bay, Denis Butkus, Joe Forbrich, John Christopher Jones, John Keating, Robert Langdon Lloyd, LeRoy McClain, Alfredo Narciso, Graham Winton, and Rose Zarin.

For more information, tickets and a complete performance schedule, visit www.tfana.org.