Mark Lamos, Westport Country Playhouse artistic director
Mark Lamos, Westport Country Playhouse artistic director, will direct a reading of “You Can’t Take It with You,” featuring F. Murray Abraham, for The Acting Company on Monday, February 8, 7 p.m., as part of the John McDonald Salon Readings. The reading will be followed by an audience reception with the cast and director. The Salon Reading will be performed at Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York. For ticket information, call The Acting Company 212-258-3111.
“You Can’t Take It with You,” Hart and Kaufman’s 1937 Pulitzer Prize-winner, centers on the families of two young lovers from vastly different backgrounds. Tony arrives on the wrong evening to dine with Alice’s family, exposing untold eccentricities — manufacturing fireworks in the basement, a printing press in the parlor, and visits by a Grand Duchess turned waitress, a Russian ballet teacher and hit-men from the IRS. Will love survive?
In addition to F. Murray Abraham, the cast includes Matt Amednt, Casey Biggs, Patricia Conolly, Stephen DeRosa, Harriet Harris, Pamela Nyberg, Angela Pierce, David Schramm and Andrew Weems.
Mark Lamos, a director of plays, musicals and opera was named Westport Country Playhouse artistic director early last year. The New York Times called him "a poet of the theater,” and his work receives a chapter in Samuel L. Leiter’s The Great Stage Directors: 100 Distinguished Careers of the Theater, along with legendary directors of the twentieth century. Lamos spent 17 seasons as artistic director of Connecticut's Hartford Stage, for which he accepted the Tony Award in 1989. He made his Broadway directing debut with a transfer from Hartford Stage of “Our Country's Good,” for which he received a Tony Award nomination as Best Director.
Lamos will soon direct the opening musical production for Westport Country Playhouse’s 80th season, “She Loves Me,” April 20 through May 8, with book by Joe Masterhoff, music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. The five-play 2010 season will continue with a contemporary comedy to be announced, June 1 through 19; “Happy Days” by Samuel Beckett, a play of luminous beauty and rare power, July 6 through July 24, directed by Lamos; the joyful and touching musical, “I Do! I Do!,” August 10 through August 28, written by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt; and a timeless and powerful classic, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” by Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett, adapted by Wendy Kesselman, September 28 through October 16.
About The Acting Company
Founded in 1972 by John Houseman, current Producing Artistic Director Margot Harley, Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone, David Ogden Stiers and David Schramm, The Acting Company is recognized as America’s leading touring classical repertory theater and is the recipient of a TONY Award for sustained excellence. Other notables who began their careers on tour with The Acting Company are Rainn Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, Frances Conroy, Harriet Harris and Jesse L. Martin.
About the Playhouse
Westport Country Playhouse, a not-for-profit theater, serves as a treasured home for the performing arts and is a cultural landmark for Connecticut. Under the artistic direction of Mark Lamos and management direction of Michael Ross, the Playhouse creates quality productions of new and classic plays that enlighten, enrich and engage a diverse community of theater lovers, artists and students. The Playhouse’s rich history dates back to 1931, when New York theatre producer Lawrence Langner created a Broadway-quality stage within an 1830s tannery. The Playhouse quickly became an established stop on the New England “straw hat circuit” of summer stock theatres. Now celebrating its 80th season, Westport Country Playhouse has produced more than 700 plays, 36 of which later transferred to Broadway, most recently the world premiere of "Thurgood" and a revival of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" with Paul Newman, and in earlier years "Come Back, Little Sheba" with Shirley Booth, "The Trip to Bountiful" with Lillian Gish, and "Butterflies Are Free" with Keir Dullea and Blythe Danner. For its artistic excellence, the Playhouse received a 2005 Governor's Arts Award and a 2000 "Connecticut Treasure" recognition. It was also designated as an Official Project of Save America's Treasures by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is entered on the Connecticut State Register of Historic Places. Following a multi-million dollar renovation completed in 2005, the Playhouse transformed into a year-round, state-of-the-art producing theater, which has preserved its original charm and character. In addition to a full season of theatrical productions, the Playhouse serves as a community resource, presenting educational programming and workshops; a children's theater series; symposiums; music; films; and readings.
For more information or ticket purchases, call the box office at (203) 227-4177, or toll-free at 1-888-927-7529, or visit 25 Powers Court, off Route 1, Westport. Tickets may be purchased online at www.westportplayhouse.org.
