The Three Musketeers are making a comeback in two major Midwest theatres. Minneapolis' Theatre de la Jeune Lune presents their newly adapted version in their newly renovated warehouse theatre, through Feb. 16. St. Louis Repertory Theatre performs its version on the Mainstage as part of a 30th Anniversary season, through Dec. 27.
Theatre de la Jeune Lune's production is a company based re-consideration of Alexandre Dumas' famous story. The flyer for the show describes it as "The thrill of adventuring. The art of adventuring. The musketeers wonder where it's gone. Why scrambling an egg makes their sword hand tingle. Why that guy across the street look like their arch-enemy, Cardinal Richelieu."
Not only does the company imaginatively retell the classic, it imaginatively renovated a classic building to tell it in, winning awards for their creative renovation. The facade of the building was designed by architect Cass Gilbert and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Musketeers is the first production to be mounted in the new building, located at "First and First" -- the corner of First Avenue North and North First Street--in the historic North Warehouse District of downtown Minneapolis.
St. Louis Rep produces an adaptation by Charles Morey, artistic director of the Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake City, where the play originally premiered in 1989. Since then, Morey's Musketeers has received, to wide acclaim, two other regional staging. The Rep's version is a co production with Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, which will unveil the sets and costumes for a spring production in 1998 .
Morey has been involved with the St. Louis production, for which he helped with casting in New York, and wrote "a fairly major re-write" for. Morey's Dracula was staged at the Rep in 1992, and his The Hunchback of Notre Dame (incidentally, an original version was produced last winter at Jeune Lune) is set to premiere at California's PCPA Theatrefest in 1998. For more information about The Three Musketeers in either theatre, refer to Theatre de la Jeune Lune and The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis regional listings.
--By Blair Glaser
