Tony winner John Glover will star in the upcoming Second Stage production of Athol Fugard's new drama, Sorrows and Rejoicing, which will begin previews Off-Broadway Jan. 15. In doing so, he repeats a performance he created at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ, last May. Joining him in New York will be Charlayne Woodard. Fugard will direct.
Woodard will take the part played by L. Scott Caldwell in Princeton. Also in the New Jersey cast was Blair Brown, who won a Tony for Copenhagen. Her role has not yet been cast at Second Stage.
Fugard is the South African author of such noted plays as Master Harold...and the Boys, Mecca, Valley Song and Blood Knot. The new work takes place in the Karoo region, a semi-desert area of southern Africa. There two women, one white and one black, find that they love the same exiled poet.
After the Princeton run, Sorrows traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, said a spokesman for the McCarter. Fugard still directed, but a different cast was featured.
Glover, who plays the poet, won his Tony for Terrence McNally's Love! Valor! Compassion!, in which he essayed a dual role. Most recently, he headlined Brian Friel's Give Me Your Answer, Do! Off Broadway. Woodard has made her mark primarily in film, with credits like “Meteor Man,” “One Good Cop” and “Angie.” On television, she was a regular on “Chicago Hope.” She also starred in a television version of the musical Ain’t Misbehavin’.
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Ricky Jay And His 52 Assistants was a sold-out hit at NYC's Second Stage Theatre in 1994. Jay brought his show back to the Second Stage in 1997, and in late 2000, word came that he'd be hurtling towards New York again — this time to Broadway, assuming a theatre became available.
That has yet to happen, but October will see a new Jay show, a duet with the man who directed his first outing, David Mamet. Two Hussies will do a one-night-stand Oct. 4 at Town Hall. The show is being presented by SFX Entertainment/Delsener Slater Enterprises.
Following that, Off-Broadway's Second Stage Theatre has announced that Jay will also be part of its 2001-02 season in a show titled Ricky Jay — Back in New York, previewing in March 2002. Mamet will direct, but this is not the same Jay show as the one at Town Hall.
The addition of the Jay show resulted in some shuffling of the Second Stage 2001-02 schedule. Wallace Shawn’s 1979 work Marie and Bruce has been pushed back to June and the revival of Edward Albee’s Seascape, directed by Mark Lamos, will now open the 2002-03 season.
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Currently on the Second Stage stage, Chicago wunderkind director Mary Zimmerman continues making inroads into New York theatre. She's opened the season with her adaptation of Ovid's myths, Metamorphoses, which started previews Sept. 19 and opened Nov. 4 for a run that's been extended to Dec. 2. She helmed The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci Off Broadway and recently staged the NYSF's Central Park Measure for Measure.
The cast includes Anjali Bhimani, Raymond Fox, Kyle Hall, Doug Hara, Felicity Jones, Chris Kipiniak, Louise Lamson, Erik Lochtefeld, Heidi Stillman, and Lisa Tejero. The show won the 2000 L.A. Ovation Award for Best Play and has also been staged at Seattle Repertory (February 2000).
With a swimming pool as the performance's centerpiece, Metamorphoses stages the great transformation myths of Ovid with additional material compiled by Zimmerman from other sources, including the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. King Midas, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Cupid and Psyche all make appearances during the evening, wherein they change physically, emotionally and mentally. Zimmerman, a MacArthur Fellowship ("Genius Grant") recipient, is known for her innovative work with classical texts including Arabian Nights and The Odyssey, which she staged for Chicago's Goodman Theatre. Zimmerman is a Resident Manilow Director at the Goodman and an ensemble member of Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre Company, where Metamorphoses premiered in 1998.
Designing Metamorphoses are Daniel Ostling (set), Mara Blumenfeld (costumes), Andre Pluess & Ben Sussman (sound) and TJ Gerkens (lighting).
—By Robert Simonson
