Brenda Shoshanna's LOOKING FOR PARCIVAL to Premiere at Gene Frankel Theatre
In 'Looking for Parcifal,' the award-winning playwright Brenda Shoshanna parts the curtains on the strange interactions between family and staff in a seemingly normal hospice where nothing appears to go right. 'Looking for Parcival' receives its world premiere at the Gene Frankel Theatre, 24 Bond Street, beginning Tuesday January 20. Directed by Richmond Shepard, the serio-farce features a cast of six that includes Dan Burkarth, Daniel Hicks, Stacy Hull, Linda Landino, Nathaniel Moore, and Vanna Pilgrim. The production's two-week Off-Off-Broadway engagement plays through Saturday January 31, with an opening set for Sunday January 25 at 3pm.
THE LOWER DEPTHS Opens This Week at The Producers' Club
'The Lower Depths' by Maxim Gorky is a powerful classical Russian play about a group of hilarious, downtrodden lodgers in a boarding house. Their lives consist of staving away hunger and poverty mixed with idle entertainment until a pilgrim, Luka, arrives on the scene. Luka brings with him tales of the world abroad as well as a seemingly bottomless supply of hope and dreams. He inspires the residents of the boarding house to reach and try to pick themselves up from the dregs of society, while teaching love and respect and responsibility. However, charged with the fire Luka kindles in them, the muck at The Lower Depths begins to stir, and the result is not as positive as Luka had hoped.
CHILDREN OF PARADISE Opens 2/7 at Theater for the New City
"Children of Paradise," a play with mime that draws its inspiration from the classic of French film, comes to life in a physically demanding new staging written and directed by Richmond Shepard. With music direction by Harrison Wade, and a cast of 14, "Children of Paradise" parts the curtains on a small French theatre in the 1800's, The Funambules, where Jean Baptiste Gaspard Debureau was the first mime to play Pierrot as the leading character, supplanting Harlequin.