“I know we’re in a lot of pain but we’re not going to die. We’re going to live for a long time. A long, long row of days and evenings.” –Anton Chekhov, Adapted by Kimberly Pau, Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet
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Photo by Ashley Garrett
Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet
September 14 – October 28, 2018
A.R.T./New York Theatres Mezzanine Theatre
502 W. 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019
New York, NY 10019
A Mash-Up of Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov and Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare
Directed by Eric Tucker
Uncle Vanya adapted by Kimberly Pau
5 actors. 2 classics. 1 epic production.
Bedlam’s Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet “begins casually and ends by breaking your heart” This mash up production holds up “a Shakespearian mirror to Chekhov in order to unleash his oft-hidden weirdness, wildness, and yearning.”
Meet the cast
Creative
ERIC TUCKER
(Director)
Wall Street Journal DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR 2014. Off Broadway: Pygmalion (Bedlam, Sheen Center); Peter Pan (Bedlam, Duke on 42nd); Vanity Fair (The Pearl); Bedlam’s Sense & Sensibility (Off Broadway Alliance Award; Lortel nomination, Best Director; Drama League nomination, Best Revival); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Drama League nomination Best Revival; WSJ Best Classical Production 2015; NY Times Critics Pick); Bedlam’s Saint Joan (NY Times/Time Magazine top 10; Off Broadway Alliance Best Revival 2014); Bedlam’s Hamlet (NY Times top 10; Time Out NY and Backstage Critics’ Pick); Tina Packer’s Women of Will. For Bedlam: Sense & Sensibility A.R.T.; Hamlet/Saint Joan McCarter Theater; Central Square Theater (Elliott Norton Outstanding Visiting Production/Outstanding Ensemble, Boston Globe Top Ten); Dead Dog Park, New York Animals (World Premiere by Steven Sater/Burt Bacharach), Twelfth Night and What You Will (NY Times Critics’ Picks); The Seagull (WSJ Best Classical Production 2014). Other: The Merry Wives of Windsor (Two River); Disney’s Beauty & The Beast (OSF); Pericles (APT, WSJ Best Classical Production 2017); Sense & Sensibility (The Folger Theater, 4 Helen Hayes awards including Best Director and Best Production); Copenhagen (Central Square Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (HVSF), Mate (The Actors’ Gang). Eric received his M.F.A. from the Trinity Rep Conservatory. He resides in New York City where he is Artistic Director of Bedlam. KIMBERLY PAU (Playwright) Pau’s plays have been developed and produced at HERE, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Flea, The Brick, Theater for the New City, SPACE at Ryder Farm and as part of the Planet Connections Festivity, (Outstanding Playwriting Award), and have been published by Smith and Krauss, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books and in a literature textbook by Kirszner-Mandell. With Bedlam, Pau is currently developing Kind Man, a new play about toxic masculinity. She also plays in the band Deep Sea Brain and serves as Bedlam’s Managing Director. BFA NYU.
LES DICKERT
(Lighting Designer)
Les Dickert designs for a diverse range of contemporary and classical theater, dance, and international performance art. Previously with Bedlam: Sense and Sensibility, The Seagull, New York Animals, What You Will, Twelfth Night, Cry Havoc. New York: Isaac’s Eye, Photograph51, Card and Gift, This is Fiction, Perdita, Intimate Apparel, Seven Guitars, Julius Caesar, others. Dance: White Oak Dance Project; San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Tulsa, San Diego, Orlando, and Joffrey Ballets. International: Le Louvre, Centre Pompidou, La Scala, and the National Ballets of England, Denmark, Australia, Belgium, Canada and Russia. Awards: Mahindra, Ovation, multiple Hewes nominations. MFA: Yale School of Drama. JOHN McDERMOTT (Set Designer) Recent designs include Creditors at Shakespeare and Company, Peter Pan for Bedlam at the New Duke, Pride and Prejudice for Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival and Primary Stages, Sense & Sensibility at Sheen Center, Judson Gym, Folger Shakespeare Theater, Portland Center Stage and A.R.T. in Cambridge, Ms. Estrada, a new hip hop musical by the Q Brothers, at The Flea and Zurich with Colt Coeur Company at NYTW. Associate Professor at Adelphi University.
CHARLOTTE PALMER-LANE (Costume Design) For Bedlam: Peter Pan, Pygmalion. Recent credits: Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Three Musketeers, The Liar, Othello, The Winter’s Tale, An Iliad, As You Like It, Our Town, The General from America (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival); Blithe Spirit (Pennsylvania Shakespeare); Rutherford and Son (Mint Theater); Family Reunion, Other Desert Cities, You will Remember Me (Hudson Stage Co.); Camping with Henry and Tom (Barrington Stage Company); God of Carnage (Shakespeare & Co.); As You Like It (Folger Shakespeare Library). Film and TV: BBC, “Doctor Who,” “Miss Marple,” “The Chronicles of Narnia,” Guarding Tess, Quiz Show, “Sneaky Pete.” United Scenic Artists 829. charlottepalmerlane.squarespace.com KARIN GRAYBASH (Sound Design) has created sound designs for Regional Theaters such as Hartford Stage, Long Wharf, Berkeley Repertory, Dallas Theater Center, Yale Repertory, McCarter, Arena Stage, Portland Stage, Folger Theatre, TheatreWorks, and the Alliance, among others. Her conceptual sound design for Popsicle’ s Departure was also produced internationally. Karin was the original live sound consultant for the multi-media production Freedom Rising at the National Constitution Center. Many of her soundscapes can be heard at The Franklin Institute’s exhibit entitled Your Brain. Karin also holds the position of Sound Supervisor for the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. GIGI BUFFINGTON (Voice and Text Coach) Straight White Men, Mary Page Marlowe, Second Stage; Pass Over, LCT3; The Minutes, The Rembrandt, BLKS, You Got Older, The Doppelganger, HIR, Linda Vista, The Christians, Visiting Edna, East Of Eden, Steppenwolf Theater Company; Hamlet (David Tenant & Patrick Stewart), Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Royal Shakespeare Company; Texts & Beheadings, BAM; The Tempest, LaMama; Coriolanus, Red Bull; The Maids, (Director), Pericles, Othello, An Illiad, The Seagull, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Richard III, Antony and Cleopatra, APT; Associate Arts Professor, NYU, Tisch. JULIANA BEECHER (Production Manager) previously worked with Bedlam on Sense and Sensibility & The Seagull; and on three renditions of Hamlet & Saint Joan – most recently as the production manager/lighting supervisor for its national tour. She has designed lights for productions across New England and New York, and worked as an assistant at LCT3, BAM, New Rep, Portland Center Stage and others. Juliana is currently pursuing a MA in anthropology at The New School.
PRODUCTION HISTORY
Reviews
(Bedlam’s “Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet”) performed by a five-person ensemble, is altogether startling … like even the most avant-garde of (Eric Tucker’s) shows, (it) is both unpretentious and enormous fun … While the tone is often comic, on occasion wildly so, the underlying emotions are shatteringly serious: You never doubt that “Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet” is all about the people that we never get to love, and the heartbreak that flows from that hard reality.”
Sit back and marvel at how effortlessly we are being drawn into the co-existing dramas.”
With the luminous Zuzanna Szadkowski(‘s) … husky inflections, expressive strut and sleepy-sad eyes, it’s no wonder she’s the object of all the men’s desires.”
Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet begins casually and ends by breaking your heart. … The brilliance of Tucker and his company is to hold up a Shakespearean mirror to Chekhov in order to unleash his oft-hidden weirdness, wildness, and yearning. … Szadkowski and Millonzi are outstanding.”
(Bedlam is) an invaluable addition to our present-day theater scene.”
Kimberly Pau’s loosely contemporary adaptation of “Uncle Vanya” (Yelena to her husband: “take an antacid”) and Mr. Tucker’s use of songs like “Avalon,” “MacArthur Park” and “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” lend the story a timeless sense of frustration and anomie.. Ms. Szadkowski’s earthy, approachable Yelena has a convincing melancholy underlining, and Ms. Millonzi handles Sonya, who can too easily be reduced to a pathetic sad sack, with sympathetic care.”
Gallery
