Providence, Rhode Island's Trinity Repertory Company has altered its current season lineup, replacing the new musical, Largo, by David Henry Hwang, with Marie Jones' Stones In His Pockets.
The new-play slot will be filled by the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel's The Long Christmas Ride Home.
The previously-announced world premiere of Largo will be postponed until next season to allow for more development time. The musical — with book by Hwang (Flower Drum Song) and songs by Rob Hyman, Rick Chertoff, David Forman and Eric Bazilian — follows a once-famous rock band, The Convictions, who went their separate ways after a bad break-up. Now, years later, they reunite in a secluded retreat in Iowa — where composer Dvorak found the inspiration for his New World symphony’s memorable "Largo" movement — to see if they can repeat history.
In its place, a production of Irish playwright Jones' Stones In His Pockets will play Feb. 21-April 6, 2003. Brian McEleney directs the play about two men who become extras when a Hollywood movie overrun their wee Irish community. The play, which ran on Broadway in 2001, also currently has a national tour — directed by original helmer Ian McElhinney — featuring stage and screen star Bronson Pinchot ("Perfect Strangers," Putting It Together).
Following up her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, How I Learned to Drive, Vogel's The Long Christmas Ride Home will make its debut at Trinity Rep May 16 June 29, 2003. Artistic director Oskar Eustis will helm the new work about a family whose car spins out of control on an icy road following a Christmas dinner gone awry. Each child steps out of the scene to tell their story "as the family's fate literally hangs in the balance," a release states. Vogel's other works include The Baltimore Waltz, Desdemona and The Mineola Twins. The rest of the Trinity 2002-03 season includes:
- Michael Frayn's 2000 Tony Award winner for Best Play Copenhagen will run Dec. 6, 2002-Jan. 19, 2003. The drama theorizes what happened one September night in 1941 when Nazi-employed physicist Werner Heisenberg visited his mentor Niels Bohr and his wife in Copenhagen.
- A new work, Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Joan Holden plays Jan. 31-March 9, 2003. The new play based on Barbara Ehrenreich's best seller will make its East Coast premiere at Trinity Rep. The San Francisco Mime Troupe's Holden follows the story of a woman who — under the guise of an unskilled recently divorced homemaker — tries to survive working as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a Wal-Mart clerk and many other minimum-wage jobs across the United States.
- The Thomas Meehan-Charles Strouse-Martin Charnin musical, Annie, will run April 25-June 8, 2003. The story of a little orphan girl who meets a millionaire and sets out to find her birth parents has been enjoyed by audiences since 1977 — when it won seven Tony Awards.
— by Ernio Hernandez
