PHOTO CALL: Judith Thompson's Palace of the End Off-Broadway

By Matthew Blank
June 23, 2008

The New York City premiere of Judith Thompson's Palace of the End opens June 23, commissioned, developed and produced by Epic Theatre Ensemble. Performances play the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre on West 42nd Street.

The play is billed as an "incendiary and haunting triptych of monologues that intimately explores the experiences of three key figures of the Middle East crisis: Lynndie England (Teri Lamm), the U.S. soldier who was convicted of abusing detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison; David Kelly (Rocco Sisto), the British weapons inspector who allegedly committed suicide after being involved in a government scandal and Nehrjas Al Saffarh (Heather Raffo), a member of the Communist Party of Iraq who suffered under Saddam Hussein's regime and died when the Americans bombed her home during the initial Gulf War."

The play's 2007-08 staging by the Canadian Stage Company in Toronto, garnered a 2008 Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for Outstanding New Play. The play won this year's Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

The New York staging is directed by Daniella Topol.

Tickets, priced $50, are available by calling (212) 279-4200 or by visiting www.ticketcentral.com. The Peter Jay Sharp Theatre is in the Playwrights Horizons complex located in Manhattan at 416 W. 42nd Street.

For more information visit www.epictheatreensemble.org.

Here is a look at the production:

Heather Raffo as an Iraqi woman		Rocco Sisto as David Kelly

Teri Lamm (front left) as Lynndie England, Rocco Sisto (center) as David Kelly and Heather Raffo (rear right) as an Iraqi woman

From left: Teri Lamm as Lynndie England, Rocco Sisto as David Kelly and Heather Raffo as an Iraqi woman

From left: Teri Lamm as Lynndie England, Rocco Sisto as David Kelly and Heather Raffo as an Iraqi woman

Photos by Carol Rosegg