The Metropolitan Virtual Playhouse Presents THE VALIANT

Obie Award winner Metropolitan Playhouse presents a new free "screened" reading, live-streamed at no charge, with talkback to follow: THE VALIANT, Holworthy Hall and Robert Middlemass.

Murderer James Dyke (Bryson Bruce, Thomas Jefferson in the national tour of Hamilton) faces his execution with dignity and pride. He will not explain or deny his crime, but he does not repent it. The Governor of the state grants a young woman who claims to be his sister a last-minute visit, and the prison warden (Broadway and regional actor, John Ottavino), a consoling pastor, and Dyke himself are forced to reckon with the significance of personal honor and public duty.
THE VALIANT was a popular play twice made into films. The play's inspirational vision of personal responsibility takes on new meaning in director Cheryl Black's telling for the Metropolitan Virtual Playhouse, which sets an African American prisoner as a voice of clarity in a world that will not grant him justice. This version is a bracing illumination of a probing play.

Discussion including audience participation follow the readings, with director Cheryl Black, Professor of Theater (emeritus) at the University of Missouri.

Directed by CHERYL BLACK--director and scholar lately of the University of Missouri-- the cast features Broadway's John Ottavino as The Warden, and star of Angelica's tour of Hamilton, Bryson Bruce. Also featured are Dewey Caddell, Joseph J. Menino (Shadow of Heroes), DeAnna Supplee (On Strivers Row). Settings by Vincent Gunn.

Harold Everett Porter (1887-1936) took his nom de plume Holworthy Hall from a Harvard freshman dormitory. At Harvard on scholarship, he was an editor of both the humor magazine The Lampoon as well as the literary magazine, The Advocate. On graduating, he worked as a publisher with Little Brown & Co., and later with his father's own imprint, A.D. Porter Company, of which he later became president. A prolific writeer, Hall was a poet, novelist, short story writer, and historian, as well as playwright. He wrote The Valiant with Harvard classmate Robert Middlemass.
Middlemass (1883 - 1949) began his career in insurance, but soon turned to acting. He debuted on Broadway in 1914 in the Bludgeon, and included among notable stage credits The Butter and Egg Man (1925), but had greatest success as a character actor in Hollywood, where he moved in the 30's.

Streaming February 27, 2021 at 8:00 pm (Eastern) through March 3, 2021 at 10:00 pm (Eastern). Available at: www.MetropolitanPlayhouse.org/WatchValiant.

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