The late Harry Kondoleon's final play, Saved and Destroyed, will finally have its day Nov. 15, when Craig Lucas directs the work at Rattlestick Theatre in Greenwich Village. The play had been scheduled for February 2000 but was delayed until May and then postponed again (the February slot was filled by The Messenger, by David Van Asselt). Now, the Kondoleon work will have its first preview on Nov. 15 and open Nov. 19 for a run through Dec. 3.
The wait may have been worth it, for now the Rattlestick is holding a whole Harry Kondoleon Festival. Kondoleon's other works will be read on Monday nights. Furthermore, the festival will conclude with readings of his one-act plays and a panel discussion.
Kondoleon, author of such plays as Christmas on Mars and Love Diatribe, died of AIDS several years ago.
In Saved and Destroyed, Kondoleon wrote about what he knew: the theatre. The multi-layered story deals with a group of "bitter, recriminatory" actors performing a play about a similar group of "bitter, recriminatory" actors. The drama the thesps are enacting, meanwhile, also sports a play within a play, this one about two "a-functional" families lost in a shared dream along the coast of Maine.
Lucas' other plays include Reckless, Blue Window and Marry Me a Little. His latest, Stranger, opens at the Vineyard Theatre this month. Saved and Destroyed varies somewhat from Rattlestick's usual offerings. Typically, the company presents new works by emerging playwrights, presented under the tutelage of established scribes such as Terrence McNally and Edward Albee.
Tickets at $35. For more information, call (212) 206-1515.
--By Robert Simonson
