The transition from 1999 to the start of Y2K has come and gone, and so will Arthur Kopit's e-thriller, Y2K.
The Manhattan Theatre Club staging at the Lucille Lortel Theatre ends its run Jan. 23.
An angry young computer hacker invades the lives of an affluent New York couple in Kopit's modern urban thriller, which opened Dec. 7, 1999, under the direction of Bob Balaban.
The MTC staging stars James Naughton (Chicago) and Patricia Kalember (TV's "Sisters") as victims of a benevolent hacker linked to their past. Erik Jensen, of MTC's Corpus Christi, plays the e terrorist. David Brown Jr. and Armand Schultz play investigators.
The title refers, of course, to the year 2000, and all the menacing changes the term suggests. Rehearsals began Oct. 12, and previews started at the Lortel, in Greenwich Village, Nov. 9. There was hope that the staging would be open-ended, but the show was not as embraced in New York as it was in its world premiere staging at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, KY, in March 1999. *
As an actor, Balaban recently played the title role of Mr. Happiness at New York City's Atlantic Theatre Company. He also staged Vick's Boy in Manhattan for Rattlestick Productions.
The Lortel is at 121 Christopher Street. MTC's Stage I and Stage II at City Center will soon host the Andrew Lippa musical,The Wild Party (starting Jan. 25), and Charles Busch's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife (starting Feb. 8), respectively.
Y2K designers are Loy Arcenas (set), Tom Broecker (costumes), Kevin Adams (lighting) and Darron L. West (sound).
*
Critics from around the country embraced Y2K in its March 1999 premiere at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Kentucky, where it ran 75 minutes.
Kopit's works for the stage include Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad, Wings, Indians, Road to Nirvana, Nine, High Society and the Maury Yeston collaboration, Phantom.
Naughton is the Tony-winning actor who starred in City of Angels and Chicago, and Kalember starred in TV's "Sisters" and "thirtysomething."
Although not playing at MTC's City Center location in Manhattan, Y2K is technically part of MTC's Stage I 1999-2000 season, which also includes the American premiere of Shelagh Stephenson's London hit, An Experiment With an Air Pump; The Wild Party, based on the 1928 Jazz Age narrative poem by Joseph Moncure March (opening Feb. 24); and Proof, by American writer David Auburn, about a mysterious young woman who faces the death of a genius father, an unexpected suitor and a mysterious mathematical proof, beginning May 2.
For MTC information, call (212) 399-3030.
-- By Kenneth Jones
