Record breaking crowds and unprecedented critical acclaim greeted the Pittsburgh Public Theater's thirteenth and most successful season. And with the announcement of the Pittsburgh PostGazette's year's best awards and Pittsburgh Magazine's "Best and Worst" Awards this summer, the recognition continues.
New York actor Jim Abele and Pittsburgh's own Helena Ruoti lead the list of honorees as Christopher Rawson named Abele "Performer of the Year" and singled out Ruoti's Edith Stein as the year's "most remarkable single performance." Jim Abele and Helena Ruoti were also on Bruce Steele's list of "Top Five Performances" in August's Pittsburgh Maga-. zme.
Other performers who topped the PostGazette list were George Ferencz, who directed The Hairy Ape, and Lee Sankowich whose direction of two of the season's heavy hitters, Edith Stein and The Normal Heart, helped win him a category all his own. Jim Capenos, resident sound designer for the Public, made the list this year-as -did· Lighting Designers Blu and Kirk Bookman.
"We're thrilled with the response to our work," said Bill Gardner. "We far exceeded our attendance goals for last season and we're very optimistic about the season to come." Favorable reviews greeted each of the six shows in season thirteen with raves for The Hairy Ape, Edith Stein and The Normal Heart.
And it wasn't just the critics who liked the shows. Attendance for the season averaged over 98% with subscriptions filling 92% of suhscribahle capacity and single ticket sales exceeding the goals set for five out of the six shows. Subscription sales for this season are expected to top a reconl 15,500.
"This coming season is the most appealing season we've ever put together," said Marketing Director Rosalind Ruch. "We asked our subscribers what they wanted. This season - they'll get it! "I'm Not Rappaport and Fences were the first choices in a spring subscriber preference poll. 'Rappaport' has already been announced for show two and Fences is a strong possibility for slot six. Hedda Gabler should be very popular among those who clamored for classics, and for the comedy fans it would be hard to find a more appropriate choice than Noel Coward's Fallen Angels.
With The Immigrant, a sure bet in a city like Pittsburgh, and The Habitation of Dragons by Academy Award-winning screenwriter and playwright Horton Foote, this season is destined to be another winner for the Pittsburgh Public Theater.
PUBLIC THEATER UNVEILS SENSATIONAL NEW SEASON
Producing director Bill
Gardner announces world premiere by major American author.
Following its most successful season ever, the Pittsburgh Public Theater has announced its schedule for 1988-89. Producing Director William Gardner describes the new season as "the most exciting and varied lineup of my five-year tenure." It includes the world premiere of The Habitation of Dragons by Academy Award-winner Horton Foote; the Pittsburgh premiere of the Tony Awardwinning hit comedy I'm Not Rappaport; and Hedda Gabler starring Pittsburgh's most acclaimed actress, Helena Ruoti, in one of the greatest female roles in all dramatic literature.
Also on the bill are The Immigrant: A Hamilton County Album which, since its premiere at the Denver Theatre Center in 1985, has been winning the hearts of theatergoers across the country and Fallen Angels, a delightful comedy by the legendary Noel Coward.
"We want to put together a balanced season," says Gardner. "The majority of our subscribers appreciate the fact that they see something different with every show, but we want to make sure that those who tend to like comedy are as pleased as tnose who lean toward drama.It's a tough job. I honestly believe, though, that this
season will be tremendously appealing." As for the sixth show Ganlner says, "We'll keep the slot open as long as possible in hopes of obtaining the rights to produce Fences, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Pittsburgh native August Wilson. No firm announcement, however, can be made until the rights are made available. Other titles on the list of possibilities for show six include Driving Miss Daisy, Steel Magnolias and Pirandello's The Rules of the Game. For details, see inside.
World-renowned. Horton Foote to write, direct, season opener
The Habitation of Dragons to premiere at Public. See story, page 2.
Shown: Screenwriter Horton Foote with Matthew Broderick during filming of 1918 in Texas, which is also the setting of Foote's play at the Public.
Broadway Tony winner will he holiday hit!
I'm Not Rappaport: Best Play of 1986 by Herb Gardner, author of A Thousand Clowns. Seestory,page4.
Shown: Best Actor 1986, Judd Hirsch, and co-star Cleavon Little in original Broadway production of I'm Not Rappaport.
Pittsburgh's own Helena Ruoti stars in Hedda Gabler
Edith Stein director l.£e Sankowich and star Helena Ruoti (shown) return in new adaptation of Ibsen classic see story, pages.
Geraldine Page won the Best Actress Oscar for The Trip To Bountiful, 1985, written by Horton Foote.
ACADEMY AW WINNING WRITER PREMIERES NEW PLAY
"Let me tell you, Horton Foote could tell his story in needlework, and I would stand in line to experience it. "Mike McGrady, Newsday
Pittsburgh audiences will he able to experience Horton Foote's work as a playwright and director firsthand this September when the Pittsburgh Public Theater presents the world premiere of The Habitation of Dragons. Habitation takes place in the same small-town Texas world that Foote created in the Academy Awardwinning films Tender Mercies and The Trip to Bountiful. He is a natural storyteller whose work shows us families going about their lives - the daily routines, the special moments, the difficult quietthat we recognize as our own.
Lillian Gish starred in The Trip To Bountiful on Broadway, 1953.
Horton Foote Film Series
The Carnegie Museum of Art Theater
Friday, To Kill a Mockingbird
September 23 (1963) Robert Mulligan, 8 pm USA, 129 min
Friday, Tender Mercies (1983) September 30 Bruce Beresford, USA, 8pm 93 min.
Friday, The Trip to Bountiful
October 7 (1985) Peter Masterson, 8 pm USA, 106 min. Horton Foote is scheduled to appear in person.
David Lawrence Hall Auditorium, University of Pittsburgh
Sunday, Courtship (1987)
October 16 Howard Cummings, 7:30 pm USA, 91 min.
Sunday, On Valentine's Day
October 23 (1986) Ken Harrison, 7:30 pm USA, 106 min.
Sunday, 1918 (1985) Ken HarriOctober 30 son, USA, 91 min.
7:30pm
Admission $3.00. Students, senior citizens, members of the Carnegie, $2.50. Co-sponsored by the Film Studies Program of the University of Pittsburgh.
Foote's Feats
1987 The Widow Claire (Off. Broadway) The Story of a Marriage (American Playhouse, PBS)
1986 Lily Dale (Off-Broadway) Blind Date (Off-Broadway) Courtship (Film) On Valentine's Day (Film)
1985 The Trip to Bountiful (Film) 1918(Film)
1983 Tender Mercies (Film)
1972 Gone With the Wind (Stage; musical version)
1966 The Chase (Film; adapted by Lillian Hellman)
1967 Hurry Sundown (Film; co-writer)
1965 Baby, The Rain Must Fall (Film)
1962 To ~ill a Mockingbird (Film; adapted from Harper Lee's novel)
1954 The Traveling Lady (Broadway)
1953 The Trip to Bountiful (Broadway) The Trip to Bountiful (Television)
1952 The Chase (Broadway)
In 1962, Horton Foote's screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird, based on a book by Harper Lee, won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay as well as the Writers Guild of America Award. He repeated this feat some twenty years later in 1983 for Tender Mercies, a film about a country western singer's efforts to put his life hack together. Tender Mercif!s starred Robert Duvall, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance. Duvall understands what Foote's writing demands of an actor: "You can't push it. You have to just let it lay there. It's like rural Chekhov, simple but deep."
In accepting her Oscar as Best Actress for her tour de force performance in The Trip to Bountiful, Geraldine Page credited Foote with her success, joking: ''It's all your fault, Horton." And it was his fault. Page did not even read the script. "When I knew Horton had done it, I accepted immediately. He writes real characters using real dialogue."
Families, change and the small community of Wharton, Texas (renamed Harrison in the plays) are at the heart of Foote's writing. "I have a theory that for a certain kind of writer, and here I include myself, what you write about really is formed for you by the time you are ten years old." The major change that took place in his life was the death of his grandfather. In a recent interview with Samuel G. Freedman in the New York Times Magazine, Foote said: " the event I've always been groping toward as a writer, was the day my grandfather died. Until then, life was just magic. I never felt so secure in my life as sitting on the porch swing and knowing I was the grandson of one of the richest families in town and my grandfather was the most respected man in town I think it was the turning point to my whole family."
Foote was a born listener in a family of talkers. "When I was growing up, I spent half of my time in the house listening. I always loved old people, and you know they always adored me, because I could sit and listen for hours. Ask 'em this, that, get 'em off on tangents. Often, I'd go home and mimic them for my mother. And I always wanted to go hack for more." His brother had a difficult time understanding why Horton preferred old-folks' stories to baseball. The young Horton didn't really know why he ~as fascinated by story after story, but he did know that he was. As he later said, "These stories have haunted me all my life.''
The Orphans' Home Cycle is loosely based on the life of Foote's father. In the introduction to four of these plays, Foote writes that " change, unexpected, unasked for, unwanted, hut to be faced
Robert Duval I won the Best Actor Oscar for Tender Mercies, 1983.
and dealt with " is the basis of his work. This theme resonates in The Habitation of Dragons as we see the effect change has on the generations of the Tolliver family. The realization that change is permanent, that you can never turn back time no matter how much you wish to do so permeates the play. The men in Foote's families are brothers and sons and husbands and fathers and workers and members of a community all at the same time, each role with its own set of loyalties and duties, each relationship hound to change with time and circumstance.
For the NBC Television Playhouse, Foote wrote The Trip to Bountiful which starred Lillian Gish as Carrie Watts and was broadcast live in 1953. Later that year, Bountiful was rewritten as a Broadway play, again with Gish in the leading role. The 1985 film featured Geraldine Page's Oscar-winning performance as Carrie Watts. Foote's other Broadway play, The Cha.se, featured Kim Stanley and was made into a film, directed by Arthur Penn, whose cast list read like a Hollywood Edition of Who's WhoMarlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Robert
To Kill A Mockingbird won Oscars for Gregory Peck and Horton Foote (Best Screenplay Adaptation) 1962. Redford, Angie Dickinson, E.G. Mar, shall and Robert Duvall with a screenplaJ by Lillian Helhnan.
During the Golden Age of Television , Foote wrote screenplays for Philco Television Playhouse, Playhouse 90 and thE U.S. Steel Hour. Three of the plays from The Orphans' Home Cyc/,e- Courtship, Valentine's Day and 1918 - have been filmed and were seen last year on PBS', American Playhouse as the three-part series Story of a Marriage. The Foote famil} has been closely involved in each of theSE pieces. Foote's daughter Hallie and sot Horton Jr. will appear in The Habitation of Dragons here in Pittsburgh. The genius of Foote's writing is the spirit of his person. He has written plays and films that have the air of simple truth about them - real, tangible, joyous, difficult truth - as only a man rooted in belief can know it. As Foote says, "I guess I finally, deeply, inside myseli do feel that in spite of all the chaos around me, there's an awful lot to celebrate in human beings."
Mary G. Guaraldi
Horton Foote, with Sissy Spacek and Mel Gibson, accepts his Oscar for Tender Mercies (Best Original Screenplay) in 1983.
1988-89 SEASON
THE HABITATION OFDRAGONS
World premiere written and directed by Academy Award-winning Horton Foote September 20 - October 23
This bold and absorbing Texan family saga resounds with themes of profound love, heartrending loss, divided loyalties and, ultimately, triumphant forgiveness.
l'M NOT RAPPAPORT
By Herb Gardner • November 8. December 18
This joyfully funny Tony Award-winning comedy by the author of A THOUSAND CLOWNS features a pair of crusty, cantankerous Central Park bench-warmers who keep the rabble-rousing faith!
THE IMMIGRANT A HAMILTON COUNTY ALBUM
By Mark Harelik • January 3 • February 5
Told with loving affection, this heartwarming comedy-drama is the true story of its author's own grandparents - a family photo album brought to life. European Jewish immigrants Leah and Haskell Harelik find the American dream in a small, skeptical Southern town.
FALLEN ANGELS
By Noel Coward • February 21 • March 26
This classic Coward comedy is an intoxicating romp, bubbling over with giddy good fun.
Philip Minor, director of the Public's runaway hit, PRIVATE LIVES, returns to direct this devilishly impudent bit of British wit.
HEDDA GABLER
By Henrik Ibsen• April 11-May 14
Helena Ruoti, star of EDITH STEIN, returns to the Public to portray Hedda, one of the greatest female roles in world dramatic literature. Critically-acclaimed Lee Sankowich directs a new adaptation by Obie Award-winning playwright Corinne Jacker.
May 23 • June 25
We hope to get the rights to produce FENCES by Pulitzer Prize-winning Pittsburgh native August Wilson. Other titles on the list of possibilities include DRIVING MISS DAISY, STEEL MAGNOLIAS and Pirandello's THE RULES OF THE GAME.
BROADWAY TONY WIN WILL BE HOLIDAY ffiT!
I'm Not Rappaport, the hilarious comedy that's thrilling audiences everywhere, makes Pittsburgh debut.
"Hello, Rappaport; how's the fa. mily?"
"I'm not Rappaport."
"Hello, Rappaport; how's the shoe business?"
"I'm not ~appaport."
"Hello, Rappaport; how the hell are ?" • ya.
"I'm not Rappaport, and don't slap me on the back!"
"Who are you to tell me how to say hello to Rappaport?!"
Many of us will recognize the title of this season's holiday show, I'm Not Rappa.port, as a line from an old vaudeville sketch. And while the play may have some elements of vaudeville to it, including a duo old enough to have appeared on stage in the age of burlesque, I'm Not Rappaport touches audiences of today with its hilarious but poignant message
Original 'Rappaport' cast included Michael Tucker, Cleavon Little and Judd Hirsch, who won the Tony Award for Best Actor.
Opening on Broadway in 1985, the show received immediate critical acclaim It went on to receive numerous awards, including a Tony for author Herb Gardner (Best Play) and for one of its original stars, Judd Hirsch (Best Actor).
I'm Not Rappaport is the story of Midge and Nat, two crusty, cantankerous old timers who meet and converse on a bench in Central Park West. Each has his own personal philosophy when it comes to dealing with life's hardships.
Nat is an outspoken radical who, if we can believe him, has encountered some pretty extraordinary experiences during his lifetime. From his early years he has faced adversity head on, and isn't going to let a few calendar days change that. He has become a source of distress for his daughter, who is trying to convince the surly senior citizen to move into a more tranquil environment. But Nat is stubbornly unwilling to settle down despite his years.
Midge, on the other hand, has found that it is easier to maintain a low profile and keep out of trouble. He is about to be fired from his job, one that he has held for years, as a super in an apartment building. His strategy is to hide from the manager and not give him the opportunity to deliver the bad news. Nat is astounded at this approach and is anxious to lead Midge into a grand campaign against mistreatment of the elderly. Midge tries hard to ignore these militant ideas but is somehow grudgingly attracted to his charismatic compatriot.
The roles of Nat and Midge have attracted such well-known actors as Cleavon Little, Ossie Davis, Hal Linden and Jack Klugman. The two curious eccentrics, as well as those that they encounter in their whimsical adventure, were carefully crafted by author Herb Gardner.
Herb Gardner's talent for dramatic writing was revealed when he submitted his very first play, A Thousand Clowns, to producers on Broadway. The show opened on Broadway in 1962 and became a smash hit. Gardner had spied actor J ason Robards in another play, Toys in the Attic, and decided that he was perfect for the leading role in A Thousand Clowns. Robards recognized the author's gift for humor, saw that the show was the perfect opportunity for his introduction to comedy and agreed to do it.
Also appearing in A Thousand Clowns were Sandy Dennis and William Daniels, who later starred on Broadway in 1776 and received wide recognition as Dr. Craig on St. Elsewhere. A Thousand
Clowns was welcomed with fantastic reviews. A New York Times critic callee the play "sunny and wistful, sensible anc demented, and above all, unfailingl: amusing."
The stage version of A Thousanc Clowns was so well received that there wa: a demand to extend it to a wider audience and the film, also starring Jason Robards was released in 1965. The New Yori Times, in its comparison of the two said "the humor is still surprising, and Mr Robards is still full of spice with hi clownish wise-cracks If you didn' see A Thousand Clowns on Broadway you should certainly see it on the screen.'
Herb Gardner began his amazin1 string of achievements before he reache( the age of 30. Along with the success of .1. Thousand Clowns he managed a triumpl with just about everything. His very firs novel, A Piece of the Action, was pub lished just prior to the opening of his firs hit show
Gardner is an alumnus of Carnegi, Tech. He went on to write plays, compos, a series of comic strips for the London Ob server, and write extensively for televisim and film including Who is Harry Keller man and why is he saying those terrib£ things about me?, starring Dustin Hoff man.
I'm Not Rappaport, Gardner's lates hit, is making its way to theaters acros the country and is thrilling audience everywhere. He has once again proved hi flair for comedic writing with a message In this story about Nat and Midge he ha turned a skit from the golden age of come dy into a touching play about the golde1 age of life.
Catherine L. Creage
PLAN YOUR HOLIDAY GROUP OUTING WITH US! Groups of 10 or more receive substantial discounts to 'Rappaport' or any of this season's shows. Call the PPT Box Office for details: 321-9800
~al Linden as Nat and Ossie Davis as Midge on Broadway in 1985.
Judd Hirsch, Nancy Travis and Cleavon Little in Broadway's I'm Not Rappaport.
William Daniels, Jason Robards anc Sandy Dennis in Herb Gardner's J Thousand Clowns on Broadway.
PITTSBURGH'S NO.I ACTRESS PLAYS GREAT ROLE
Critically-acclaimed actress Helena Ruoti takes on the challenge of a role played by some of the most famous actresses in recent history.
Helena Ruoti, the Public's Hedda Gabler, won critics' raves for her role as Edith Stein: "A sterling performance'' (Ed Blank, The Pittsburgh Press). "The most remarkable single performance this year an actress to treasure" (Christopher Rawson, PostGazette). "This performance demanded the greatest ranges of age and emotion, and Pittsburgh's finest actress delivered" (Pittsburgh Magazine). Ruoti previously won over Public Theater audiences with her appearances in Serenading Louie, The Real Thing and Becoming Memories. She was recently honored by the Pittsburgh chapter of Hadassah, the largest women's organization in the country, as an "acclaimed actress and outstanding young woman who has achieved success in both family life and career."
Maggie Smith in National Theater's Hedda Gabler directed by Ingmar Bergman, 1970.
Often referred to as the actress' equivalent of Hamlet, the role of Hedda Gabler is considered one of the greatest female roles in world dramatic literature. Hedda is a captivating and dangerous woman who, paralyzed by the stringent conventions of society, becomes obsessed with controlling others' destinies, and destroying those she cannot control. Since the first production of Henrik Ibsen's groundbreaking play in 1891, Hedda has been one of the most sought after woman's parts in the theater.
Hedda is a multifaceted woman - ice cold one moment, exploding with fiery passion the next. She is tormented and destructive, yet those around her never suspect her darker side until it is too late. The role is one of the most psychologically complex female characters ever written. It calls for a highly skilled actress who can embody the many subtleties of Ibsen's tragic heroine, while commanding the stage and propelling the play to its shattering conclusion.
The legendary Italian star Eleanora Duse, who was called the greatest actress of her time, was one of the first important actresses to star in Hedda Gabler. Duse, incidentally, died in Pittsburgh in 1924 during her third United States tour.
A notable production of Ibsen's masterpiece was at the National Theater in Britain in 1970, starring Maggie Smith, and directed by Ingmar Bergman in his first work for the English-speaking theater. The New York Times called Smith's Hedda" exquisite and somberly heartfelt." That same year in Stratfonl, Ontario, Irene Worth was a passionate, munlerous Hedda, while the following year in New York, Claire Bloom delivered a Hedda that was as "cold as death." The beautiful Ingrid Bergman also played the coveted role in a 1962 BBC television production.
Glenda Jackson performed the role in the Royal Shakespeare Company production directed by Trevor Nunn that toured internationally in 1975. Clive Barnes of the New York Times said Jackson's was "a Hedda to chill the mind," calling it "a merciless yet beautiful performance." This production was subsequently made into a film entitled, simply, Hedda. Other famous Heddas include Eva I.eGallienne, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Tallulah Bankhead, J ~e Alexander, Susannah York,
Glenda Jackson in film version of Royal Shakespeare Company's Hedda Gabler, 1975.
Dianne Wiest, and Charles Ludlam at Pittsburgh's American Ibsen Theater in 1984.
To this illustrious list of names the P~ lie Theater proudly adds Pittsburgh's premiere actress, Helena Ruoti, who most recently dazzled critics and audience members with her portrayal of the title role in Arthur Giron' s Edith Stein.
The Public has also engaged the talents of Obie Award-winning playwright Corinne Jacker and veteran Public Theater director Lee Sankowich. Jacker has been commissioned to write a new translation of Hedda Gabler specifically for the Public, with Sankowich and Ruoti in mind. "I know Helena's work, and she fits the idea I'm working with. Too frequently Hedda is portrayed as an androgynous character. I don't agree with that. I feel Helena will he a more 'female' Hedda."
The Public's production will he set in the late nineteenth century, hut the language will he modernized to make it more accessible to today's audiences. Jacker is considering adding a new opening scene using material taken out of Ibsen's earlier drafts. She will he in residence at the Public during most of the rehearsal period to fine tune the script as the work progresses.
Jacker won Obie Awanls for her plays Bits And Pieces and Harry Outside. Her play, After The Season, was produced by Bill Gardner at Academy Festival Theatre in Chicago in 1978, and starred Irene Worth, under the direction of Marshall Mason.
Lee Sankowich's directing credits at the Public include The Normal Heart, Edith Stein, Vikings, Serenading Louie, The Real Thing and Becoming Memories. Helena Ruoti was featured in four of these productions.
With an artistic team that blends these three great talents with an explosive and classic piece of dramatic literature, the Public Theater's Hedda Gabler will he a spectacular theatrical event that should not he missed.
Kimberly Lewis
Italian actress Eleanora Duse as Hedda in 1903.
Ingrid Bergman played Hedda in 1962 BBC television production.
THE A
"Mark Harelik's family tribute is heartfelt, funny and loveable." Houston Chronicle. "Superb!" Variety.
Since its premiere at the Denver Center Theatre Company in 1985, The Immigrant has been winning the hearts of theatergoers in professional theaters across the country. Critical raves and soldout houses greeted this warm and humorous play in two consecutive seasons in Denver, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., at the GeVa Theater in Rochester, New York, and most recently at the Cleveland Playhouse where it was a major success.
It is the story of a European Jewish immigrant who found himself alone in Hamilton, Texas as a result of an immigrant resettlement program called The Galveston Plan. A true story, the play follows the life of Haskell Harelik as he struggles to achieve the American dream against the backdrop of a skeptical southern town.
The Immigrant is not a tale of hardship as one might expect, nor is it a moral tale of good and evil. And while much of the play is extremely funny, it can't be described as a comedy either. It is a simple story of very real people who are merely as big as life and who, in being so, evoke in the audience a powerful emotional response. Because they are so real, we tend to see a great deal of ourselves in them.
This strong identification comes, in large part, as a result of the playwright's
relationship to his subject. Mark Harelik, the grandson of the central character, not only wrote the play but performed the part of Haskell in the original production. Inspired by his grandmother's photo album, he set out to tell the story of his grandparents' struggle to conform to the expectations of a small Baptist town without losing sight of their cultural and religious heritage. More than just the story of his own grandparents, however, Harelik knew as he wrote that the album could belong to millions of Americans.
The Immigrant is the story of nearly every immigrant family that struggled and eventually triumphed in this country. In Pittsburgh, where most natives need only look hack a generation or two to find their own immigrant heritage, the play is likely to inspire immediate recognition and heartfelt support.
THE GALVESTON PLAN
In the first years of this century the port of New York and the Statue of Liberty welcomed many thousands of Eastern European Jews who were fleeing religious persecution and longing for the freedom and prosperity promised by the United States of Ameri ca ._ As the New York ghettos swelled, ho-ivever so too swelled the animosity of more firmly rooted New Yorkers tow~rd this ever growing population of poor and illiterate newcomers.
Comedy loaded with explosive sight gags, lunatic non-sequiturs and hysterically funny situations.
Get ready for another exquisite Public Theater presentation of a Noel Coward comedy. Philip Minor, director of the enormously successful Tenth Season finale Private Lives, returns to direct Fallen Angels, another one of those ruefully charming British comedies written by the master of civilized wit.
Noel Coward can be light and frothy and still say the most perceptive things about human beings. His comedies center on a tiny, beleaguered elite, the type of folks who expend a great deal of energy repelling those who would intrude upon their lifestyle and sensibility. The settings are like isolated fortresses to which someone has forgotten to pull up the drawbridge, giving us the chance to peek in. His comedies make a habit of excluding such mundane affairs as jobs, children or visible means of support, trifles his characters find insupportahly tedious.
Fallen Angels was first presented in 1925 at the Globe Theater in London featuring Edna Best and the beautiful and sexy Tallulah Bankhead. Hermione Gingold and Hermione Baddeley used the 1949 revival to showcase their considerable comic personalities. In January, 1956, Nancy Walker and Margaret Phillips appeared to rave reviews in a popular New York revival and in 1974 the play was turned into a major TV special with Joan Collins and Susannah York.
For 'fallen angels' Julia and Jane, the young and beautiful wives of two some-
Thus the Galveston Plan was initiate< by the successful Jewish philanthropis JacohH. Schiff.
Toeaseovercrowdingii
the ghettos and to ensure a wider dissemi nation of the Jewish population, im migrant boats were diverted away fron New York and toward Texas where, he tween 1907 and the beginning of Worl1 War I, as many as 10,000 Eastern Euro pean Jews disembarked at Galveston.
These Texan Jews, however, didn't hav the same advantages as their New Yorl counterparts. Not only did they lack th ethnic community of their predecessors hut they entered the country in a land un accustomed to welcoming immigrants
Many of these new Americans foum themselves alone, the only Jews in com munities that were primarily Protestan and ,reluctant to embrace a new and for eign religion.
The Immigrant deals with the conflic that arose as one immigrant family decid edjust how much of their new culture the: should make their own, and how much o their native culture they should leave he hind. It is a story of pride, of success am of people joining together to overcom, prejudice and fear.
FALLEN ANGELS BY THE LEGENDARY NOEL COU'1
D. Trevor O'Donnel
what stuffy English husbands, the pm sion has gone out of their marriage! While they rue this development, they ar willing to accept their lot because in e, change for a lack of passion they get corr. fort and convenience.
But soon the fnn begins. Each ha received a postcard from Maurice Duclo - who has been (in succession) th French lover of both women before the were married - announcing his arrival i London just as the husbands go off on golfing weekend. You'll treasure the mem ory of these two well-bred women trying t wait each other out for a man who thrill them both, getting delicately loaded, m ing insults as rapiers in a duel of wits. Th girls' bosom friendship is in peril and c course, the husbands do come home earl er than they had planned, and it's Cowar, at his best.
Fallen Angels is loaded with explosh sight gags, lunatic non-sequiturs and hy! terically funny situations. In writing thi very early hit of impudence, Coward ir itiated what would eventually hecom standard Cowardesque: the drunk seem the all-knowing housemaid, and the flru ry of morning-after explanations, all wit a maliciously comic flair.
Rob Zeller
By Henrik Ibsen
Note: An alternate seating plan allows the North section (shaded area) to move, creating four-sided seating"theater in the round."
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Screenwriter Horton Foote and Matthew Broderick on the set of the film 1918 in Texas 1985. Foote will premiere his play, The Habitation of Dragons - also set in his nativE Texas - at the Pittsburgh Public Theater in September. Story Inside on page 2.
