The Royal Shakespeare Company's production of T.S. Eliot's rarely-seen play, The Family Reunion, will close May 13 after a short run that began on May 10. The show plays at the the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre.
The Family Reunion features Margaret Tyzack (Lettice and Lovage), heading a cast guided by Adrian Noble. The play concerns the dark dread lurking underneath a birthday gathering in a North England manor house. Zoe Waites is also in the cast. Perhaps its only other major New York City production of the work was at the Phoenix Theatre in the 1958. The cast featured Lillian Gish and Fritz Weaver. According to the New York Times, Eliot ridiculed his own play only 11 years after writing it.
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The Brooklyn Academy of Music is playing host to a trio of productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company this May: Don Carlos, The Family Reunion and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Coming along for the trip will be actors Margaret Tyzack, John Woodvine, Zoe Waites and director Adrian Noble.
Schiller's tragedy, Don Carlos (May 16-20), a hit in London, will be directed by Gale Edwards at the BAM Harvey Theatre. The play, about public and private discord in 16th-century Spain, features John Woodvine, Josette Simon and Rupert Penry-Jones in the title role. Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (May 21-27), seen at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House, is directed by Michael Boyd, an RSC associate director.
For more information, call BAM at (718) 636-4100.
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Two additional RSC productions will visit the U.S. this summer. In New Haven, CT, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas will present Macbeth at the Long Wharf Theatre, June 15-25. Anthony Sher stars in the RSC staging, helmed by Gregory Doran. Sher was last seen in the States as painter Stanley Spencer in Stanley, the final offering of the now defunct Circle in the Square.
Meanwhile, June 22-July 2, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival will host a new RSC mounting of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Lindsay Posner is the director.
For information on Macbeth, call (888) 278-4332. For Shrew, call (415) 392-4400.
--By Robert Simonson
