The late Harry Kondoleon's final play will receive its first staging next winter, when Off-Broadway's Rattlestick Productions presents Saved and Destroyed. At the helm will be another playwright, Craig Lucas, author of Prelude to a Kiss and The Dying Gaul.
Kondoleon, author of such plays as Christmas on Mars and Love Diatribe, died of AIDS several years ago.
In Saved and Destroyed, Kondoleon wrote about what he knew: the theatre. The multi-layered story deals with a group of "bitter, recriminatory" actors performing a play about a similar group of "bitter, recriminatory" actors. The drama the thesps are enacting, meanwhile, also sports a play within a play, this one about two "a-functional" families lost in a shared dream along the coast of Maine.
Lucas' other plays include Reckless, Blue Window and Marry Me a Little.
Save and Destroyed varies somewhat from Rattlestick's usual offerings. Typically, the company presents new works by emerging playwrights, presented under the tutelage of established scribes such as Terrence McNally and Edward Albee.*
Leading off the Rattlestick 1999-2000 season is a new play by Ben Bettenbender, Vick's Boy, directed by the busy Bob Balaban. Vick's is Balaban second directorial assignment of the fall. At the Lucille Lortel Theatre, he will stage the Manhattan Theatre Club production of Arthur Kopit's Y2K, a thriller about a modern couple menaced by a young computer hacker. The play, which stars James Naughton, begins Nov. 9.
Additionally, Balaban will display his acting skills in Mr. Happiness, a one-man show that is part of the Atlantic Theatre Company's upcoming all-David Mamet season. Happiness runs Sept. 29-Nov. 21 on a double bill with The Water Engine.
Vick's Boy is set in a Generation X law firm and concerns a personnel associate, a fax room "facilitator," videotape, blackmail and corporate politics. Johanna Day, Andrew Polk, Rob Sedgwick, Jim Brucchitta and Justin Hagan star. Performances begin Sept. 29 for an Oct. 3 opening and a run through Oct. 31.
The remainder of the Rattlestick season is as follows:
€ Sex and Violence by Travis Baker, directed by Brian Adams, Spring 2000.
€ The Messenger, by David Van Asselt, Spring 2000.
For information, call (212) 627-2556.
-- By Robert Simonson
