Tampa Repertory Theatre is presenting THE ICEMAN COMETH, THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, and more in the 2015-2016 season. Find out more below!
One hundred years ago, in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the great American playwright Eugene O'Neill saw one of his plays on stage for the first time. To commemorate that occasion, TampaRep's 2015-16 Season is one of American Visions, concluding with O'Neill's towering masterpiece, The Iceman Cometh. "No four-play season can encompass the enormous range of the American theatre, but the three plays we've selected to accompany Iceman provide a glimpse of that variety," says Tampa Rep.
First up is
The Children's Hour, by Lillian Hellman.
Hellman's first play,
The Children's Hour opened in 1934. It brought immediate fame -- and scandal -- to the young playwright. With its focus on how rumors and lies can destroy lives, the play remains pertinent in today's era of social media bullying. Opening on September 17th in the Smith Black Box Theatre at Tampa Preparatory School, the production features Emily Belvo (Ophelia in TampaRep's
Hamlet) and Maggie Mularz (Laura in our
Glass Menagerie), directed by Emilia Sargent (making her TampaRep directorial review after sterling performances in
A Streetcar Named Desire,
The Glass Menagerie,
I Do! I Do!, and
Betrayal).
For the next production, we jump to the mid-career of Sam Shepard and
True West, one of his most memorable plays.
For this production, we'll return to Studio 120 on the USF Tampa campus, and we're excited that it also mark the return of Megan Lamasney, director of TampaRep's first production -- Alcestis. In True West, Shepard creates a modern parable: two brothers who struggle to find their own kind of success in consumption- and celebrity-swamped American culture. The two brothers will be played by Jack Holloway (TampaRep's
Hamlet), and one of the most well-known actor/director in the Tampa area) and Dan Granke (new to Tampa, he's already made a splash with TRT(2)'s
Bethany and as co-artistic director of the new
Tampa Shakespeare Festival). Opening on January 7th, you can bet that fireworks will fly.
Our third play is the Florida premiere of Lauren Gunderson's fascinating
Silent Sky.
Silent Sky is one of the hottest plays around right now (and Gunderson one of the hottest playwrights). The play follows the story of Henrietta Leavitt, one of America's greatest astronomers -- but because she was a woman working in the early 20th century, one of those unknown heroes. You can find out more about the play at
http://silentskyplay.tumblr.com/ -- see playwright's notes, information about other productions, pictures, music, and more. For our production, director Connie LaMarca-Frankel (
Phoenix and
I Do! I Do!) will bring out the humor and pathos in Henrietta's story. There's romance, too, and family tensions, as the partially deaf Henrietta figures out the distance between stars and between ourselves.
Silent Sky performs in the Smith Black Box, and opens on May 5th.
We'll draw the mainstage season to a close with
The Iceman Cometh. O'Neill's towering play brings together a cross-section of down-and-out drinkers and dreamers to Harry Hope's saloon. There they wait for the annual appearance of Theodore Hickman (known as Hickey), the jolly salesman who comes for a weekend bender where he picks up the tab for all the residents.
Iceman recently received rave reviews for the production with Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music. (They also received raves earlier for the production at the
Goodman Theatre in Chicago.) TampaRep's production, led by artistic director C. David Frankel, will feature Ned Averill-Snell (
Hamlet,
I Do! I Do!,
Betrayal,
The Apocrypha of Theodore Roosevelt) as Hickey. The intimate confines of Studio 120 at USF will be transformed into what Larry Slade (the "old Foolosopher") calls The End of the Line Café for a close encounter with this great American classic.
Iceman opens on June 16.
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