Angels Star Kathleen Chalfant Headlines Theatre for a New Audience New Season

By Ernio Hernandez
August 11, 2003

New York City's Theatre for a New Audience has announced its upcoming 25th season, which will include The Last Letter starring Kathleen Chalfant, Pericles and W.S. Gilbert's Engaged.

Taken from Russian writer Vasily Grossman's novel "Life and Fate," Last Letter shares a letter written in 1941 by a Russian Jewish doctor to her son. At the time of the Nazi occupation of the Ukraine, she explains things that are going on around her and inside her. Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman directs the New York Premiere of his English adaptation, translated by Robert Chandler. Chalfant (Wit, Angels in America) stars in the 60-minute work set to begin Dec. 11 and open Dec. 18 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Bartlett Sher — who directed last season's TFANA staging of Moliere's Don Juan — returns to the company to take on William Shakespeare's Pericles. The Bard's tale of loss and redemption will begin performances at The Performing Arts Center at Purchase College Feb. 6, 2004, and transfer to the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre, Feb. 12, 2004. The creative team includes Christopher Akerlind (sets and lighting), Elizabeth Caitlin Ward (costumes) and composer Peter John Still.

The final production for the 2003-04 season will be the W.S. Gilbert farce Engaged directed by two-time Tony winner Gerald Gutierrez (The Heiress, A Delicate Balance). The work penned in 1877 by half of the famous Gilbert and Sullivan team will be produced for the first time since 1925 on April 13, 2004. No theatre has been announced yet.

Tickets to The Last Letter at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street, will be available by calling (212) 239-6200. For more information, visit www.tfana.org.