THE SUNSET LIMITED Starring Tucker Smallwood and Joe Spano opens 10/26 at Rubicon

THE SUNSET LIMITED by Pulitzer Prize-winner Cormac McCarthy opens Rubicon Theatre Company's 16th Season on Saturday, October 26 at 7:00 p.m., just on the heels of the October 25 release of McCarthy's highly anticipated blockbuster film "The Counselor," directed by Ridley Scott with an all-star cast including Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz.

THE SUNSET LIMITED, a searing drama about two strangers who meet under extraordinary circumstances, stars Emmy Award-winner Joe Spano ("NCIS," "Hill Street Blues," "NYPD Blue" and Rubicon's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and Tucker Smallwood ("Contact," "Traffic," "Star Trek Enterprise," and "The Sarah Silverman Program").

McCarthy is best known for his Southern Gothic, Western and Post-Apocalyptic genre novels, including "All the Pretty Horses," "The Road" and "No Country for Old Men." The film adaptation of "No Country for Old Men" won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

THE SUNSET LIMITED, directed by Rubicon Associate Producer BRIan McDonald, combines pathos and humor. Says McDonald, "This beautifully crafted, consistently thought-provoking, and deeply intimate work asks us to consider what is true and important in life."

THE SUNSET LIMITED opens on Saturday, October 26 at 7 p.m. and runs through Sunday, November 17 at 2 p.m., with low-priced previews on Wednesday, October 23 at 7 p.m., Thursday, October 24 at 8 p.m. and Friday, October 25 at 8 p.m. at Rubicon Theatre Company, 1006 E. Main Street in Ventura, CA.

MORE ABOUT THE PLAY

THE SUNSET LIMITED was first produced by the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago in 2006 and opened Off-Broadway later that year. After an encounter on a subway platform, Black, a deeply religious ex-convict, and White, a suicidal professor, begin an intense dialogue about human suffering, the existence of God and the meaning of life while sitting at Black's kitchen table. As Black attempts to connect on a spiritual and emotional level, the White remains steadfast in his hard-earned despaiR. Locked in an intense philosophical debate, both passionately defend their personal credos and try to convert the other.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

CORMAC McCARTHY was born in Rhode Island in 1933. He attended Catholic High School in Knoxville and then went to the University of Tennessee in 1951, where he majored in Liberal Arts before serving four years in the U.S. Air Force. He then returned to university where he began writing and published two stories. He married and settled in Sevier County, Tennessee, and had one son. Some time later, the marriage ended and McCarthy went on a traveling fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He toured England, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain, before settling on the island of Ibiza, which was at the time a sort of artist's colony. There, McCarthy completed revisions of his novel "Outer Dark," published by Random House in 1968.

From 1974-75, McCarthy worked on the screenplay for a PBS film called "The Gardener's Son," which premiered in January, 1977. He published "Suttree" in 1979, followed by the historical Western "Blood Meridian." "All the Pretty Horses," the first volume of The Border Trilogy, was published by Knopf in 1992, selling 190,000 copies within the first six months of publication. McCarthy edited and revised a play he had written in the mid-1970s in the summer of 1994 called "The Stonemason," a tragedy that explores the fortunes of three generations of a black family in Kentucky. Shortly after, he released the second and third volumes of The Border Trilogy: "The Crossing" and "Cities of the Plain."

In 2005, McCarthy published "No Country for Old Men," which was adapted into an award-winning film by Joel and Ethan Coen. In 2006, Knopf published "The Road," which won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The Sunset Limited, commissioned by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, premiered in May of 2006. HBO subsequently produced an adaptation starring Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones (directed by Jones).

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

BRIan McDonald began his directing career as assistant to Tony-nominated director Christopher Renshaw during his work on Queen: The Musical (a.k.a. We Will Rock You). Other directing credits include Tennessee Williams' Talk to me Like the Rain and Let me Listen, Hooters, Our Town, Little Women, Bye Bye Birdie, HONK!, Babes in Arms, Once on This Island, Schoolhouse Rock, LIVE!, Seussical the Musical, Footloose and Godspell. For Rubicon, Brian directed Bus Stop (5 Ovation nominations including Best Play), "Master Harold"... and the boys (3 Ovation nominations including Best Play, an Indie Award, and StageScene LA Award for Best Director) and the World Premiere musical Hello! My Baby, written and conceived by Tony-nominated, Emmy and Golden Globe winner, Cheri Steinkellner. He also conceived and directed the critically acclaimed holiday musical revue A Rubicon Family Christmas.

Before moving to the West Coast, McDonald appeared in the National Tours of Miss Saigon and Forever Plaid, the latter of which he also directed for various regional theatres including Rubicon.

Regionally, McDonald has appeared on the stages of the Denver Center, Theatre Virginia, The Lyric Stage, La Mirada Performing Arts Center, Ensemble Theatre Company, Pasadena Playhouse, Thousand Oaks Performing Arts Center and the Ahmanson. LA Weekly honored him with the Best Supporting Actor Award for his performance as Gaveston in the Circle X production of Edward II directed by Michael Michetti.

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