Yale Rep's Coffee, with Overbey and Gross, Warms Up Nov. 26 | Playbill

Related Articles
News Yale Rep's Coffee, with Overbey and Gross, Warms Up Nov. 26 Yale Repertory's production of filmmaker Preston Sturges' play, A Cup of Coffee will open Nov. 26. Coffee runs through Dec. 18. The theatre said it still had tickets available.
//assets.playbill.com/editorial/c69d35863bd18c397781647981203db9-ne_91843.gif
Michael Gross as J. Bloodgood Baxter in A Cup of Coffee. Photo by Photo by T. Charles Erickson

Yale Repertory's production of filmmaker Preston Sturges' play, A Cup of Coffee will open Nov. 26. Coffee runs through Dec. 18. The theatre said it still had tickets available.

Directed by Joe Grifasi, A Cup of Coffee is a romantic comedy centering on the professional aspirations of Jimmy McDonald, a sales rep for a coffee company in the Depression. The play was adapted by Sturges into his 1940 film "Christmas in July."

As reported earlier, the Coffee cast features Michael Gross ("Family Ties"), John Rothman, Brian Mysliwy and Kellie Overbey (Betty's Summer Vacation, Buried Child), as well as Clement Fowler, Vanessa David, James Greene, George Hall, and Michael Potts.

"It's a rare opportunity for audiences to see a production of a Preston Sturges play," said Yale rep's artistic director and dean of the Yale School of Drama, Stan Wojewodski, Jr. "Although rightly lauded for his brilliant work in film, Sturges...understood very well the different demands and strengths of the two media."

Sturges was responsible for such film classics as "The Lady Eve," "The Palm Beach Story," "The Great McGinty" and "Unfaithfully Yours." He wrote A Cup of Coffee in 1931, and it was slated to premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse, but the production was sidelined by the author's Hollywood success. Director Grifasi, also an actor, has staged Nobody's Fools at New York's Chelsea Theatre, The Group of Seven and the Case of the Glowing Pine at Tarragon Theatre and Between Two Stools at Pears Toronto. As an actor, Grifasi appeared in the Broadway productions of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Play's the Thing, The Boys Next Door and other productions.

The production staff of the show includes David Swayze, scenic designer; Jacqueline Firkins, costume designer; Stephen Strawbridge, lighting designer; David Budries, sound designer; and Anne T. Davison and Wendy A. Weckwerth, production dramaturgs.

A Cup of Coffee plays at Yale Rep, located at Chapel and York Streets in New Haven. Tickets range from $10 - $34. For information, call the Yale Repertory Theatre box office at (203) 432-1234 or visit http://www.yale.edu/yalerep.

-- By Murdoch McBride

 
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!