Lacey portrays Virginia Carson in the musical, which plays the Festival Aug. 11-27 in a production directed by Bryan Putnam. The company also features Brad Standley, Garrett Eucker, Mary Mossberg, Carole J. Bufford, William Day, Sarah Kinlaw, Frederick Heringes, Ryan Andes, Katie Hale, Christopher Michael McLamb, Jana Ballard, Robyne Parrish, Liz O'Donnell, Matthew Hardy and Eric Zutty.
Trouble in Shameland, according to press notes, concerns "one man’s tragic story, a mother’s triumphant return to living, and a young boy’s never-ending search for his lost platypus." The musical features a book and score by Bryan Putnam, musical direction by Kenneth Gartman and lighting design by Herrick Goldman.
Shameland — which incorporates puppetry, black-light theatre and video — concerns the aftereffects of a child who accidentally kills himself playing with a gun. "It's about [the older brother] who deals with his survivor guilt . . . by drawing and writing," Lacey recently told Playbill.com. "He goes into this creative world and creates these characters that he vicariously experiences life through. He's trying to find himself and doing it through art. And [as his mother], I'm also going through a lot of guilt because I didn't secure the gun. It's about a son and a mother's different journeys of guilt and shame, thus Shameland, and 'Shameland' is the [title of the] graphic novel that he is writing."
Florence Lacey was most recently seen Off-Broadway in Kathie Lee Gifford's Under the Bridge. She has performed the title role in Evita over 3,000 times, on Broadway and in touring companies around the world; she received the Drama-Logue Award for her work in that Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in Los Angeles. Lacey has also appeared on Broadway in Les Misérables; Hello, Dolly!; and The Grand Tour and Off-Broadway in Sweetfeet, Elizabeth and Essex and Styne After Styne. Her other theatrical credits include John Brown's Body, A Streetcar Named Desire, Carousel, Gypsy, Follies and One Red Flower. Lacey is the recipient of the Pittsburgh Drama League Award and the MAC Award.
Tickets, priced $15, are available by calling (212) 279-4488 or (888) FRINGENYC. For more information visit www.fringenyc.org or www.troubleinshameland.com.
