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World Premiere of Mamet's Courtroom Comedy, Romance, Has Balaban, Nobbs, Bryggman and More
By Kenneth Jones
06 Jan 2005
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From Top: Bob Balaban and Larry Bryggman
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Twelve Angry Men won't be the only all-male courtroom play in New York in early 2005. The world premiere of David Mamet's Romance by Atlantic Theater Company is a modern-day farce with choice actors in a modern court setting.
The Off-Broadway company of men for the Neil Pepe-directed run (starting Feb. 9) includes Bob Balaban ("Gosford Park," "Waiting for Guffman"), Larry Bryggman (fresh from Roundabout Theatre Company's Twelve Angry Men on Broadway), Jim Frangione (Mamet's "Heist" and The Old Neighborhood), Steven Goldstein (Mamet's "House of Games," Broadway's Our Town), Steven Hawley (Mamet's "The Spanish Prisoner," Atlantic's Richard Cory), Keith Nobbs (MTC's Fuddy Meers, Broadway's The Lion in Winter), Christopher Evan Welch (Broadway's The Crucible, Woody Allen's Writer's Block).
Opening is March 1 at Atlantic's home in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.
Following many acclaimed revivals of Mamet's plays, Romance marks Atlantic's first world premiere by the author, who co-founded the not-for-profit company. The limited engagement concludes April 3.
The comedy is billed this way in the Jan. 6 casting announcement: "Set in a modern day courtroom, Romance is a farce about those things worth cherishing, and so worth making fun of."
Atlantic artistic director Neil Pepe recently staged Atlantic's production of Jez Butterworth's The Night Heron and Howard Korder's Sea of Tranquility.
Scenic design is by Robert Brill, lighting design by James S. Ingalls, costume design by Sarah Edwards and sound design by Obadiah Eaves.
Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, a two-time Oscar nominee, a director, essayist, novelist and poet. He first won recognition with his plays Sexual Perversity in Chicago and American Buffalo (later filmed with Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz). When both plays opened in New York in 1976, Mamet won the Obie Award for distinguished play writing and American Buffalo was voted Best Play by the New York Drama Critics Circle. In 1978, he received the Outer Critics Circle Award for his contribution to American theatre. In 1984, Glengarry Glen Ross won Mamet another New York Drama Critics Circle Best Play award, four Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a major motion picture in 1992. A Broadway revival is scheduled for this spring, starring Alan Alda.
In the new play, Balaban plays the Prosecutor, Bryggman the Judge, Frangione the Doctor, Goldstein the Defendant, Hawley the Bailiff, Welch the Defense Attorney and Nobbs is a character named Bernard.
Atlantic Theater Company's managing director is Andrew D. Hamingson.
Romance will play Tuesday through Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 & 8 PM and Sundays at 3 & 7:30 PM. All tickets are $55 and are available by calling Telecharge at (212) 239-6200.
Atlantic Theater Company is located at 336 W. 20th Street (between Eighth and Ninth Avenues).
Visit www.atlantictheater.org.
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