Marin Theatre Company closes its 2010-11 Season with Edward Albee's Tiny Alice, the first Bay Area production of this infamous play in over 35 years, which runs June 2 through 26. MTC Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis directs "one of Albee's most endlessly fascinating creations" (Variety), a tantalizing puzzle that is "tightly constructed, elegantly written and (most surprisingly) defiantly funny" (The New York Times). Opening night is on June 7.
"I have been working on Tiny Alice for 11 years," says Minadakis, "and am excited to finally direct this amazing, enigmatic play. It is a work of art that cannot exist anywhere but in the theater. No other medium can do justice to the mysteries that Albee has ingeniously woven together. It is an erotic gothic thriller, as well as a darkly comic allegory. With Tiny Alice, Albee combines laugh-out-loud comedy and grip-your-seat menace into powerful full expression unlike anything our audiences have ever seen. For our production, I am honored to partner with not only a fantastic ensemble of Bay Area actors, all of whom I have directed at MTC before, but also with a design team that is reuniting for the first time since our successful collaboration on
Bill Cain's Equivocation."
Premiering at the
Billy Rose Theatre in New York City in 1964, Tiny Alice was Albee's second full-length original play and his first since winning the Tony Award for Best Play in 1963 for Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?. The plot centers on Julian, a lay brother who has been ordered by his cardinal to move into the castle home of one of the wealthiest women in the world, Miss Alice, after she pledges to give the Church one billion dollars each year for 20 years. He immediately becomes entangled in a web of mysterious manipulations perpetrated by Miss Alice, her lawyer and her butler that test his adherence to religious laws and his faith and belief in God. Recent revivals of the play have been praised as "engaging" and "scintillating" for having an "infectiously high time dissecting weighty issues" (The New York Times) with specific accolades reserved for the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, who has also received the 1996 National Medal of Arts, 2005 Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement and 2008 Drama Desk Award Special Award.
Nominated for two Tony Awards in 1965 - Best Play and Best Author of a Play - and running for 175 performances on Broadway, Tiny Alice and its playwright overcame the poor reception that followed opening night. Challenged by the play's metaphysical themes, many critics, as well as members of the audience, expressed confusion over the apparent insolubility of Tiny Alice's allegorical characters, dialogue and tableaus that range from sexually lurid to theologically taboo.
Philip Roth famously wrote in the New York Review of Books that the play was "so obviously a sham - so much the kind of play that makes you want to rise from your seat and shout, 'Baloney'" that it disguised what he thought was the real subject at the center of the action: "a homosexual daydream in which the celibate male is tempted and seduced by the overpowering female." Now, over 40 years later, this rarely produced play has gained new appreciation through recent successful revivals at Hartford Stage in 1998, off-Broadway at
Second Stage Theater in 2000 and Washington Shakespeare Company in Virginia in 2002.
In the Bay Area, Tiny Alice is infamous not for the drama depicted on stage but the real life drama that occurred off stage: a long, public feud between playwright
Edward Albee and
American Conservatory Theater founder and artistic director
William Ball. With Ball directing, A.C.T. first performed the play in 1966 on tour at a summer festival at Stanford University and, then, later programmed it in 1967 for the company's first season in San Francisco. The playwright did not see A.C.T.'s production until it came to the ANTA Playhouse on Broadway in 1969 and he objected not only to Ball's unauthorized cuts and revisions to the script, which included an added aside condemning the Vietnam War, but also to his melodramatic stagings that were so operatic in nature that
John Simon of
New York Magazine called the ending "pure Don Giovanni." Although Ball restored the third act to Albee's original script for the remainder of the New York run, he revived his revised version at the Geary Theater in 1975 - without contracting with Albee for the rights. After a lawsuit failed to close the show, Albee and A.C.T. signed a rights agreement that required the company pay double royalties to the playwright. A.C.T. did not produce another play by Albee for 30 years, when artistic director
Carey Perloff programmed The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? to close the company's 2004-05 season.
MTC's production of Tiny Alice is authorized by the playwright and features an ensemble cast of MTC and Bay Area favorites - Andrew Hurteau as Julian, Carrie Paff as Miss Alice,
Rod Gnapp as Lawyer,
Mark Anderson Phillips as Butler and
Richard Farrell as Cardinal.
WHEN June 2-26, 2011
Opening Night: June 7 | Previews: June 2-5
Performance Dates
Tue, Thu, Fri & Sat 8:00 pm
Wed 7:30 pm
Sun 7:00 pm
Matinees: Thu Jun 16, 1:00 pm | Sat Jun 11 & 25, 2:00 pm | Every Sun 2:00 pm
Please check
www.marintheatre.org or call box office at (415) 388-5208 for exact performance dates and times.
WHERE Marin Theatre Company | 397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley, CA 94941
ABOUT When Brother Julian agrees to visit the Church's mysterious benefactor Miss Alice in her gothic mansion, he finds himself a pawn lost in her labyrinthine world of aggressive consorts, children's games and seething passions. Theatrically innovative, this rarely produced play first challenged audiences with its premiere in the late 60s, posing questions that far outpaced its time. Albee's infamous and lacerating treatise examines man's relationship with God and the serpentine way it is mediated through the exchange of love, money and power. MTC's revival of
Edward Albee's Tiny Alice will be the first Bay Area production in more than 35 years.
TICKETS $32-$53, details below (discounts available for Seniors and Under 30)
Ticket Prices
Previews: $32
Opening Night: $48 & $53
Tues: $33 & $35
Wed, Thu, & Sun Evenings: $37 & $42
Fri: $43 & $48
Sat Evenings: $48 & $53
Wed, Thu, Sat & Sun Matinees: $37 & $42
Discounts available:
Under 30: $20, all performances
Senior discounts, varies by performance, please call
RUSH tickets $15, available 30 minutes prior to show, based on availability
For group sales, contact Julie Knight, (415) 388-5200, ext. 3302
CONTACT www.marintheatre.org | (415) 388-5208 | boxoffice@marintheatre.org
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