Ashland, Ore.--The Oregon Shakespeare Festival will open Tony Award-winner Jeff Whitty's giddy romp The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler at 8:00 p.m. Saturday April 19th in the Angus Bowmer Theatre.
Whitty, who won the Tony for his book of the still-running Broadway musical Avenue Q (and is an Oregon native, hailing from Coos Bay), has been in Ashland working with the cast, design team and Artistic Director (and director of the play) Bill Rauch.
Rauch directed the first production of this play at South Coast Rep in 2006 and is a huge fan of the work. He said of the script: "Jeff has written a play that is right at the heart of all of my aesthetic concerns and all the things that get me going in terms of coinciding time periods, styles and genres--it's a beautiful celebration of this art form that we all practice and to me, ever surprising, an exploration of human nature. I think it is a probing and hilarious play and I'm so proud to be directing it and to be offering it to our community."
Irreverent, unpredictable and full of unexpected guests from the annals of literary history, this comedy opens at the end of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, and Hedda has shot herself again. But she's had it with the ending and in hopes of a rewrite, and just maybe a happy ending, she ventures out on a quest to find the author. Accompanied by a collection of well-loved characters, Hedda and her motley crew embark on a journey about their selves, their stories and their audiences.
The cast, led by Robin Goodrin Nordli as Hedda (who played Hedda in Ibsen's play in OSF's 2003 production) is joined by Christopher DuVal as Tesman, Kimberly Scott as their Servant, Kate Mulligan as their Neighbor, Gregory Linington as Lovborg, Anthony Heald as Patrick, Jonathan Haugen as Steven and Gwendolyn Mulamba as the Woman in Pink. The cast plays a multitude of other characters.
The design team includes Christopher Acebo on sets, costumes by Shigeru Yaji, lighting by Geoff Korf, composition and sound by Paul James Prendergast and choreography by Art Manke. Lue Morgan Douthit is dramaturg on the project; voice and text direction is by David Carey, movement by John Sipes, and assistant director is Gisela Cardenas.
Production sponsor is the Jed and Celia Meese Foundation. Production Partners are Deedee and Burt McMurtry, Charlotte Lin and Robert P. Porter, Allison Sedgwick and Brittan Family and POP.
Tickets to previews on April 15th and 17th and opening on the 19th are available. Purchase online or call the Box Office at (541) 482-4331 or toll free at (866) 545-6337.
Biographical information about the design team and cast is available at this link.
Also playing in the Angus Bowmer Theatre are William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, August Wilson's Fences and Sudraka's The Clay Cart. Running in the New Theatre are Julie Marie Myatt's world premiere of Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter and Shakespeare's Coriolanus.
(end)