Jefferson Mays, Mary Testa to Star in TFANA's Measure for Measure Off-Broadway

By Ernio Hernandez
23 Dec 2009

Jefferson Mays and Mary Testa
Jefferson Mays and Mary Testa
Photo by Aubrey Reuben

Tony Award winner Jefferson Mays will star with Elisabeth Waterston, Mary Testa and Rocco Sisto in Theater for a New Audience's upcoming Off-Broadway production of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.

Arin Arbus (TFANA's Othello last season) will stage the Bard classic scheduled to start Feb. 6, 2010 and open Feb. 14 at The Duke on 42nd Street. The run will last to March 14.

The dark comedy centers on an unbalanced society where "government leaders are helpless or hypocritical, and passions are relegated to the whorehouses and the prisons."

Mays (I Am My Own Wife, Pygmalion) as The Duke, Waterston (The Tempest) as Isabella, Sisto (The Bacchae) as Angelo and Testa (Xanadu, Guys and Dolls) will lead a cast that also features Samara Bay, Joe Forbrich, John Christopher Jones, John Keating, Robert Langdon Lloyd, Leroy McClain, Alfredo Narciso, Rose Seccareccia and Graham Winton.

The design team includes Peter Ksander (sets), Marcus Doshi (lights), David Zinn (costumes) and Jane Shaw (sound design). Sarah Pickett provides original music and John Caraffa handles movement.

The company's season opened with Rinde Eckert's Orpheus X and will continue, following Measure for Measure with the New York premiere of C.I.C.T. / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord's production of Love Is My Sin (March 27-April 17, 2010). The latter work by William Shakespeare is adapted by director Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne.

TFANA shows play at The Duke, 229 West 42nd Street. For more information, visit tfana.org.