CNU students admitted free with student I.D.0.00 Re
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Our Country's Good An engrossing drama with a sharp-edged sense of humor, Our Country's Good chronicles the journey of first British convicts transported to the furthest place known to man in 1787: Australia. These unwilling pioneers find themselves trapped between slow starvation, the brutality of the soldiers guarding them, and the terrors of this strange and wild new land. In effort to raise flagging morale and create a more humane society in the makeshift penal colony, the governor decides to put on a play...using the convicts as actors! This unusual and enlightening undertaking results in the unexpected transformation of prisoners and jailers alike. Winner of the Laurence Olivier Play of the Year Award in 1988, Our Country's Good premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1988 and opened on Broadway in 1991. A rare and unique evening of theater, Our Country's Good is at once distressing and uplifting, vicious and hopeful, desperate and reassuring as it affirms the power of art the indomitable nature of the human spirit. "[The play is] a mixture of brutality, terror, humor, irony, nascent love, dreams of ghosts and philosophizing about the nature of art in general and theatre in particular. [Playwright] Wertenbaker touches all the bases." Fri. & Sat. Oct. 24 & 25 Fri. & Sat. Oct. 31 & Nov. 1** |
Triumph of Love Which exerts greater influence over our lives: the head or the heart? Set during that great age of reason, the Enlightenment, The Triumph of Love pits the two greatest forces of the human condition, reason and passion, against each other and produces very touching and humorous results. This tuneful and charming chamber musical was first produced in 1997. Based on an 18th Century play by the French comedic genius Marivaux, it follows the twisting trail of love blazed by a young princess who masquerades as a man to capture the heart of the one she loves. A perfect combination of delightful music and a charming (often hilarious) book, this award-winning musical comedy celebrates the charm, silliness, passion and outright joy of falling in love. "The Triumph of Love is a romantic comedy in the most conventional sense, but it's also a rhapsody about the tradition of live theater, and about preservation of the old ways by breathing fresh life into them." -Stephanie Zacharek / Salon Arts and Entertainment Fri-Sat, Feb. 13-14** |
The Scarlet Letter A daring, sometimes shocking, adaptation by playwright Phyllis Nagy, this new Scarlet Letter offers a more personal story and fresh accessibility to Hawthorne's classic. At once a radical treatment and a faithful representation of the timeless story, the play maintains the novel's 17th-century Puritan setting, but with a contemporary awareness. This exciting version deconstructs the novel using modern language and modern thinking to re-explore the story of Hester Prynne who has an illegitimate daughter by the saintly Reverend Dimmesdale in Puritan Boston. The play also makes use of a narrator—a young woman who is Hester's grown daughter, stepping into the action as a precocious, perceptive seven-year old. This fascinating theatrical devise allows Hawthorne's words and ideas to meld seamlessly with the play's more modern sensibilities. Yes, Hester is still on the scaffold in punishment for the sin of adultery and still defiantly refuses to name the child's father-yet, through this sparkling adaptation, we come to understand her anew. "by freeing his story from its historical trappings and centering it on the sensual perceptions of the daughter rather than on the spiritual strivings of the adult males, Nagy has assumed the prophetic mantle of the muses."-G.L. Horton / Fri. April 09 Fri. & Sat. April 16 & 17 |