The Globe Theatres will not only have Stones in His Pockets and An Infinite Ache (both West Coast premieres), but also double the Jeffrey Hatcher as well. The San Diego company, thanks to a newly created $1 million artist-in-residence program, will be home to the Scotland Road playwright for the entire 2002 season.
That means three Hatcher plays will strut across the Globe's stages — Compleat Female Stage Beauty, SMASH and a staged reading of Work Song, a co-creation with Steppenwolf director Eric Simonson. Stage Beauty plays March 31-April 27 in the Old Globe Theatre, followed immediately by SMASH, Hatcher's adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's "An Unsocial Socialist."
Mark Lamos directs Stage Beauty, a comic contemplation of English theatre during the Restoration. In those days, fashionable actors like Edward Kynaston were suddenly forbidden from playing the female roles in Shakespeare that they had made their careers on, forcing them to seek employ in tutoring the newly necessary actresses. SMASH is another Shavian battle of the sexes, only this one comes from the page, not the stage. Sidney Trefusis is a millionaire and a socialist whose ideals drive him to abandon his fiance and take a job as a groundskeeper at a women's college where he will inspire a political revolution. Henrietta, his former wife-to-be, however, thinks women should be able to make their own decisions without the influence of a man. Craig and Karen Carpenter will direct SMASH, playing May 26- July 6 in the Globe Theatre.
As previously reported in June, the Globe will stage Stones in His Pockets the West Coast premiere of the Marie Jones play Feb. 3-March 16 with original director Ian McElhinney at the helm. The production will then traveling on to Hartford, CT's Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts and the Playhouse Theatre in Wilmington, DE. Stones in His Pockets replaced the previously announced revival of Noel Coward's Hay Fever, originally set to take the same tour as Stones.
Stones in His Pockets is seen through the perspective of Charlie and Jack, two down-on-their luck Irishmen working as extras on a Hollywood film being shot in the Irish countryside. The close-knit rural community around them is uprooted and in some ways destroyed by the arrival of the Hollywood cast and crew. Among the characters Hill and Campion portray are Caroline Giovanni, the spoiled and horny American diva; Mickey, the last remaining extra from "The Quiet Man"; and Clem, the hunchbacked British director. The play was inspired by Jones' own experience as an actor in films shot in Ireland, including 1993's “In the Name of the Father,” starring Daniel Day Lewis. Jones' other plays include A Night in November, Women on the Verge of HRT and the sequel Women on the Verge.Get a Life. Stones will stay on the West Coast and also play at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco April 16-May 12, 2002.
After its world premiere Dec. 12-Jan. 20, 2002 at the Long Wharf Theatre, the Globe gets the West Coast premiere of An Infinite Ache, May 19-June 30 on the Cassius Carter Stage. When two twenty-somethings come to the end of their uninteresting first date and are about to exit each other's lives forever when suddenly a myriad of possibilies for their futures come to life. Brendan Fox directs.
Rounding out the season will be revivals of Cassius Carter Stage revivals of Harold Pinter's Betrayal (Jan. 27-March 10), directed by Karen Carpenter, and John Murrell's stage biography of Sarah Bernhardt, Memoir, directed by Joseph Hardy (March 24-May 5).
The Globe Theatres are located in Balboa Park. For reservations, call (619) 239 2255. The Globe Theatres are on the web at http://www.theglobetheatres.org.
