Trent Dawson, Simon Jones, John Plumpis Will Decode Václav Havel's Memorandum Off-Broadway | Playbill

Related Articles
News Trent Dawson, Simon Jones, John Plumpis Will Decode Václav Havel's Memorandum Off-Broadway Casting has been announced for the TACT/The Actors Company Theatre production of Václav Havel's absurdist-tinged satire The Memorandum, to run Oct. 25-Nov. 27 at the Beckett Theatre at Off-Broadway's Theatre Row.

//assets.playbill.com/editorial/27be62ffbf77209b8d237ad9d2fb7543-trentdawson200.jpg
Trent Dawson

Jenn Thompson, a TACT company member and associate producer who staged TACT's The Eccentricities of a Nightingale to acclaim, will direct the look at "bureaucracy gone mad," written by the playwright and social activist who would become the president of the Czech Republic.

Opening night is Nov. 4. TACT is staging the play's first major Off-Broadway revival in over 40 years.

The Memorandum cast includes TACT company members Mark Alhadeff (TACT's The Cocktail Party, Incident at Vichy), Jeffrey C. Hawkins (Incident at Vichy), Simon Jones (TACT co-artistic director, TACT's The Cocktail Party, Broadway's Blithe Spirit), John Plumpis (Broadway's The Lion King, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), Gregory Salata (Incident at Vichy), Lynn Wright (The Elephant Man, As Bees in Honey Drown) and guest artists Nilanjana Bose (TACT debut, 2010 Juilliard graduate), Trent Dawson (TACT debut, "As the World Turns") and Kate Levy (On Golden Pond, Well).

In The Memorandum, a the managing director of an organization discovers that all office communications are suddenly being written in "Ptydepe," a new and impossibly complicated language. He seeks to get a memo translated, taking him through a maddening riot of red tape. The play is said to be inspired by the absurdities of life in communist Eastern Europe. Havel began writing The Memorandum as early as 1960. It was rewritten many times over, and became the second of Havel's plays produced at Prague's Theatre of the Balustrade, where he was then literary manager. The play had its American premiere in 1968 as part of Joseph Papp's inaugural season at The Public Theater winning an Obie Award for Best Foreign Play. First produced in London in 1977 (and revived in 1995), The Memorandum has been presented regularly around the world. TACT is dedicated to presenting "neglected or rarely produced plays of literary merit."

The creative team includes Adrian W. Jones (sets), David Toser (costumes), Philip S. Rosenberg (lights), Stephen Kunken (sound), Joseph Trapanese (original music) and Lily Fairbanks (properties). Meredith Dixon is production stage manager. Theatre Row's Beckett Theatre is at 410 W. 42nd Street between 9th & 10th Avenues. There will be an added performance on Nov. 23 at 7:30 PM and no performance on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 25.

The Memorandum will have the following performance schedule: Monday, Wednesday–Friday at 7:30 PM; Saturday at 2 PM & 8 PM; Sunday at 3 PM.

Tickets are $36.25-$56.25 and are available 24/7 through Telecharge.com at (212) 239-6200 or at the Theatre Row box office, 410 W. 42nd Street between noon and 8 PM.

For more information, visit www.tactnyc.org.

 
RELATED:
Today’s Most Popular News:
 X

Blocking belongs
on the stage,
not on websites.

Our website is made possible by
displaying online advertisements to our visitors.

Please consider supporting us by
whitelisting playbill.com with your ad blocker.
Thank you!