Zach Grenier Joins Red Bull Theater's THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE

Red Bull Theater today announced that Zach Grenier would join the previously announced cast for the one night only benefit performance of Marivaux's THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE, translated by James Magruder and directed by Jesse Berger.

Grenier joins Celia Keenan-Bolger, Arnie Burton, Clifton Duncan, Carson Elrod, Kristine Nielsen, andMolly Ranson. THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE will have original music composed by Greg Pliska and performed live by Lumiere String Quartet (www.lumierestringquartet.com).

Marivaux's THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE will be performed for one night only on Monday October 2nd (7:30 PM) at Leonard Nimoy Thalia at Symphony Space (2537 Broadway, at 95th Street).

Currently starring in Citizen Tom Paine with Richard Thomas at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Zach Grenier takes every opportunity to return to stage work between television and film engagements. His portrayal of Dick Cheney in David Hare's Stuff Happens at The New York Shakespeare Festival was recognized with an Ensemble Award by the Drama Desk and a Drama League nomination for the Ensemble. It was not long after that inspiring experience that he found himself cast as Beethoven in Moisés Kaufman's 33 Variations at La Jolla Playhouse. These theatrical experiences were the impetus for a move back to the NYC area. Shortly after his return, he found himself back at EST in Vern Thiessen's Lenin's Embalmers. Later that year, 33 Variations moved to Broadway, with Jane Fonda leading the cast. Zach's performance as Beethoven brought him a Tony Award nomination. Since being back on the east coast, he has twice shared the Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway stage with Frank Langella, in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons and Terrence Rattigan's Man and Boy. He has also worked twice at the Atlantic Theater Company, in Moira Buffini's Gabriel and in John Patrick Shanley's Storefront Church, a performance that garnered him a nomination for a Lucille Lortel Award. During the 2015 hiatus of "The Good Wife," he played Mephistopheles to Chris Noth's Faustus in Doctor Faustus at the Classic Stage Company.

Love is a force to be reckoned with in Marivaux's classic comedy, as Princess Léonide of Sparta employs wits and wiles-and britches too-when she attempts a tour de force triple-seduction of not only her young love, but also his two stick-in-the-mud guardians. This delightful tale of multiple misunderstandings has "a contemporary edge" (New York Times) and "delicious soufflé lightness" (New York Post) in James Magruder's translation.Marivaux's 18th-century masterpiece asks: Can the rational really reign...when the heart refuses to follow?

Pierre Carlet de Marivaux (1688-1763), a private man in a hysterically public-and most theatrical-century, once wrote: "I have spied in the human heart all the different niches where Love can hide when it is afraid to show itself, and each one of my comedies has for its object to make Love come out from its niche." Parisian by birth, Marivaux ditched a law career and made his first lasting impression in the theater with Harlequin Refined by Love (1720). Alternating his collaborations between the Comédiens Italiens and the Comédie-Française, Marivaux premiered three dozen plays in his lifetime, the most canonical among them being The Game of Love and Chance, Double Infidelities, The Surprise of Love, The Dispute, and False Confidences. Over the objections of his eternal critical gadfly, Voltaire, Marivaux was elected to the Académie-Française in 1742. A sometime journalist, Marivaux also left at his death two unfinished serial novels, Le Paysan parvenu and La Vie de Marianne.

James Magruder's adaptations of works by Molière, Marivaux, Lesage, Labiche, Gozzi, Dickens, Hofmannsthal, and Giraudoux have been staged on and off-Broadway, across the country, and in Germany and Japan. His Three French Comedies (Yale Press, 1996)) was named an "Outstanding Literary Translation" by the American Literary Translation Association. His fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Subtropics, Hopkins Review, The Normal School, Gargoyle, New Stories from the Midwest, and elsewhere. His début novel, Sugarless, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and shortlisted for the 2010 William Saroyan International Writing Prize. His collection of linked stories, Let Me See It, was published by TriQuarterly Books in 2014, and his latest, Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall, came out in 2016. His He is a four-time fellow of the MacDowell Colony and his writing has also been supported by the Kenyon Playwrights Conference and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, where he was a Walter E. Dakin Fellow in Fiction. He teaches dramaturgy at Swarthmore College and fiction at UB. Visit him at www.jamesmagruder.com.

Red Bull Theater is the not-profit Off-Broadway theater company specializing in plays of heightened language. With the Jacobean plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries as its cornerstone, Red Bull Theater embraces the imagination of theatergoers through intimate, imaginative productions of great classic stories from all eras and cultures.

Red Bull Theater has previously staged productions of Pericles, The Revenger's Tragedy, Edward the Second, Women Beware Women, The Duchess of Malfi, The Witch of Edmonton, The Maids, The Dance of Death, Loot, The Mystery of Irma Vep, Volpone, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Changeling, The School For Scandal, Coriolanus and the recent runaway comedy hit of the summer of 2017, Gogol's The Government Inspector which played an extended run at the Duke on 42nd Street and New World Stages.

Red Bull Theater's work has been recognized with multiple Drama Desk, Drama League, Lucille Lortel, Callaway and OBIE Award nominations and awards, including the Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Revival in the 2015-'16 season (School for Scandal). The company has staged over 150 Revelation Readings, named by the Village Voice "Best Play Reading Series," also developing new plays of heightened language through its annual Short New Play Festival and classical adaptations in workshops, plus offering educational programs for students of all ages, including Shakespeare in the Schools residencies. Post-play Bull Session discussions with scholars following select Sunday matinees and Readings are Free and open to the public.

An exclusive party with cast and special guests follows the benefit reading. Tickets are $150 for Reading & Post-performance Party; $300 for Premium Benefit Seating as well as the Party & VIP Pre-Show Cocktails. A limited number of Reading Only tickets will be available for $75. Tickets are on sale NOW at www.redbulltheater.com or by phone at (212) 352-3101. PLEASE NOTE: This event takes place at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space (2537 Broadway, at 95th Street).

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