WHATS ON?...

(How nice of you to ask! :-)

Gale Harold, Denise Crosby, Claudia Mason star

"Orpheus Descending"

Rarely produced Tennessee Williams classic

heats up Theatre/Theater this winter.

January 15 - February 21, 2010

LOS ANGELES - Gale Harold (Queer as Folk), Denise Crosby (Star Trek TNG), and cover girl-turned-actress Claudia Mason (Vogue, Elle, W, Cosmopolitan) head the cast of Tennessee Williams' rarely produced classic, Orpheus Descending. Rounding out the ensemble are stage and screen veterans Robert E. Beckwith, Curtis C., Francesca Casale, John Gleeson Connolly, Kelly Ebsary, Andy Forrest, Sheila Shaw and Geoffrey Wade. Independent filmmaker Lou Pepe (Lost in La Mancha) directs a six-week run, January 15 through February 21, at Theatre/Theater in Los Angeles.

Tennessee Williams' modern version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is set in the American South of repressed desires. Guitar-playing drifter Val Xavier (Harold) arrives in a small town looking for work and the opportunity to renounce his wild ways, where he meets Lady Torrance (Crosby), a woman with a tragic past who longs for rebirth. Known as one of Williams' darker and more complex plays, Orpheus Descending explores the power of passion, art, and imagination to redeem life and return it to meaning.

"I've always been interested in work that addresses the creative process and the struggle of the artist," says Pepe, best known for his documentary films that deal with similar themes: Lost in La Mancha, The Hamster Factor and Malkovich's Mail. "Here, the artist is an outsider who has descended into a small Southern town rife with gossip, intolerance, and racism."

Pepe feels a close personal connection to Williams' play, as both an artist and a descendent of Italian immigrants. "The story is haunted by the ghost of Papa Romano," he continues. "Lady's father was an Italian immigrant bootlegger murdered by the KKK for selling liquor to a black man. Romano was also an artist - he played mandolin and sang. His death is one of many instances of violence in the play against anyone who dares to speak out in favor of equality and justice - a responsibility that Williams ascribes to the artist."

The play utilizes Williams' signature selection of secondary characters to the greatest degree, such as outsider/social outcast Carol Cutrere (Mason) and the various small town gossips who comment on the action, making up a Greek Chorus.

Orpheus Descending was a play that Williams labored over for more than seventeen years. The earliest version, called Battle of Angels, opened as Williams' first Broadway production in 1940 when he was just 29. It was almost universally condemned by critics. Williams refused to give up, rewriting it five times and finally reshaping it as a modern version of the Greek legend. "Why have I stuck so stubbornly to this play?" Williams wrote. "Well nothing is more precious to anybody than the emotional record of his youth, and you will find the trail of my sleeve-worn heart in this completed play that I now call Orpheus Descending. About 75% of it is new writing, but what is more important, I believe that I have finally managed to say in it what I wanted to say, and I feel that it now has in it a sort of emotional bridge between my early years and my present state of existence as a playwright."

Orpheus Descending opened on Broadway in 1957 with Maureen Stapleton and Cliff Robertson. In 1959, Williams and Meade Roberts turned the script into the film The Fugitive Kind, starring Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward and Maureen Stapleton.

WHATS ON?...

(How nice of you to ask! :-)