 |
|
|
 |
|
|
| Claire Bloom, John Neville in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis |
 |
|
| Tickets/Registration: 213.415.5500 |
|
| Media Contact: Jennifer Dorr, 212.415.5455, email |
|
| CLAIRE BLOOM & JOHN NEVILLE IN SHAKESPEARE'S VENUS AND ADONIS |
|
A Dramatic Reading Directed By Robert Scanlan
With Musical Interludes by Violinist Gil Morgenstern |
|
| Tuesday, May 24, 8pm, $16 |
|
"The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none." — Venus
Presented By The 92nd Street Y Poets' Theater |
|
| New York, NY, April, 22, 2005—"Things growing to themselves are growth's abuse:/ Seeds spring from seeds and beauty breedeth beauty/ Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty," argues the lusty goddess of love to her reluctant conquest in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. On May 24 at the 92nd Street Y, two celebrated Shakespearian players, Claire Bloom and John Neville, bring to life this lesser-known masterpiece of the bard in a dramatic reading. Violinist Gil Morgenstern punctuates the reading with musical interludes. Both actors read as narrators, and inhabit the characters in the poem as they read. |
|
|
| ABOUT SHAKESPEARE'S VENUS AND ADONIS |
|
| Venus and Adonis (printed 1593) is one of Shakespeare's long narrative poems, and like the sonnets, it was written during the two years the Elizabethan theater was closed because of the plague. Says Robert Scanlan, director of this reading, "If Venus and Adonis were Shakespeare's only work, it would be sufficient to make him famous, but it has been overshadowed by the plays. We wanted to perform this because it's Shakespeare's neglected masterpiece. It's witty, erotic, outrageous, and astonishing. One is missing an important piece of Shakespeare's legacy without exposure to his long poems." |
|
| Venus and Adonis is a retelling of the classic myth (as found in Ovid), in which Venus is pierced by Cupid's arrow as she embraces her son, consequently falling madly in love with mortal Adonis. Shakespeare's version begins as love-sick Venus descends on earth like a bird of prey, ensnaring her beloved in her arms — "She red and hot as coals of glowing fire/ He red for shame, but frosty with desire." Shakespeare's Venus is not the object, but the agent of desire: "She's love, she loves, and yet she is not loved." The teenage Adonis scorns her, and worse, he's bored, wriggling in her embrace and pouting under her furtive kisses. |
|
| Shakespeare addressed Venus and Adonis, and his other long poem, The Rape of Lucrece, to his friend Henry Wriothesly, the Earl of Southampton. Robert Scanlan explains that there is "some conjecture" that the Earl was under intense pressure to marry and that these poems are urgent meditations on the mandate to marry without desire. Unlike the plays, which were commercial products acted before large and diverse audiences, Shakespeare's narrative poems were directed at a distinct group of aristocratic readers. Among this competitive group of University educated gentlemen, literary reputations were made or broken. Shakespeare's great rival Christopher Marlowe was also producing works in this sub-genre (Hero and Leander, 1598). |
|
|
| ABOUT THE CAST AND DIRECTOR |
|
| Claire Bloom, John Neville and Robert Scanlan last worked together on Milton's Samson Agonistes at the 92nd Street Y Poets' Theater in 1993. Neville played Samson and Bloom played Dalila under the direction of Scanlan. Bloom and Neville have performed opposite each other in Shakespeare's plays many times. They starred as Romeo and Juliet in a famous production by Robert Helpmann that began at the Old Vic Theatre in London, and then toured England, Canada and the USA, reaching New York's Winter Garden Theater in 1956. The two have also played opposite each other in All's Well That End's Well, The Tempest and Richard II. |
|
|
Claire Bloom (Narrator) |
|
| Claire Bloom made her first appearance on stage in the Oxford Repertory company at the age of 16. Her first major role was Ophelia at Stratford-upon-Avon opposite the alternating Hamlets of Paul Scofield and Robert Helpmann. In London, she played Alizon Eliot in Gielgud's production of Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning opposite Richard Burton. Ms. Bloom has also starred in numerous stage productions and films, such as Charles Chaplin's Limelight, Richard III, Look Back in Anger, Charley, A Doll's House, Islands in the Stream, Clash of the Titans, Sammy and Rosie and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. She won three major English theatrical awards for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire and was named Best Television Actress for her performance in Shadowlands. Ms. Bloom was nominated for a Tony for her portrayal of Clytemnestra in a Broadway production of Electra. Her best-selling memoir, Leaving a Doll's House, was published in 1996. Ms. Bloom made her musical debut at the New York City Opera appearing in Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Ms. Bloom's many appearances at the Unterberg Poetry Center have included the role of Dalila in Milton's Samson Agonistes (also directed by Robert Scanlan),"Shakespeare and the Actors" with Brian Bedford, "Women in Mind," "New Musical Melodramas" with Brian Zeger, and an evening of readings from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Mrs. Dalloway. |
|
|
Gil Morgenstern (Violinist) |
|
| Gil Morgenstern, violinist, has performed as soloist with orchestra, in recital or as a chamber musician all over the world and has been recognized for his artistry and technical brilliance. He has been called "a perfect demonstration of supreme ability" (The New York Times); "a remarkable violinist," (The Washington Post); "a rare poet of the violin," (The South China Morning Post). Performing in public since he was five, Morgenstern has gone on to tour five continents, playing in such musical centers as New York, London, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Berlin and Hong Kong, and throughout the United States. He has been the subject of numerous television and radio shows and his performances can be regularly heard on National Public Radio broadcasts. Morgenstern's discography includes the duos of Ravel, Kodály and Roger Sessions, chamber works of Fauré, Beethoven and Copland, and the newly released CD of music by George Tsontakis, Piano Quartet Trilogy, available on the Koch International Classics label. In addition to his solo and chamber music work, Mr. Morgenstern is the co-artistic director of 9 Circles Chamber Theatre, a creative organization dedicated to fully exploring the collaborative nature of inter-disciplinary performance, the violinist and artistic director of the Broyhill Chamber Ensemble, a diverse chamber group specializing in Classical, Romantic and contemporary works of mixed instrumentation, and the artistic director of An Appalachian Summer Festival located in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. Mr. Morgenstern has appeared on the 92nd Street Y stage many times, most recently in the 92nd Street Y's April "Czech Winds Weekend". 9 Circles, his theater company, won rave reviews for the show, Paul Celan: The Art of the Fugitive, which premiered at the 92nd Street Y in January 2003. |
|
|
John Neville (Narrator) |
|
| John Neville began his career in his native England as a classical actor, associate producer and theatrical director. In his six years with London's Old Vic Theatre, he performed in virtually all of Shakespeare's plays. For the opening of the new Nottingham Playhouse, he played the title character in Coriolanus, directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie, and was co-director and star of The Importance of Being Earnest. Under the direction of Sir Laurence Olivier, he played lead roles in the prestigious Chichester Festival's opening season. Also among his many West End Theatre credits are The School for Scandal at the Haymarket, Once More With Feeling for the New Theatre St. Martin's Lane (now the Albany), and Irma La Douce for the Lyric Theatre. For BBC television, he starred in the movie Paradise Regained and as Marlborough in the television series The First Churchills, just two more notable productions in an extensive list of credits. In 1965, Neville was honoured with an Order of the British Empire for his contribution to Britain's theatre, film and television industry. Neville has also performed extensively on the Canadian stage. Recently he starred as Feste in Soul Pepper Theatre's Twelfth Night (Or What You Will) , as Dr. Rice in Molly Sweeney for the Canadian Stage and Grant Theatres, and in Krapp's Last Tape, a one-man show for the DuMaurier World Stage and Nottingham Playhouse. Also among his noted credits are Love's Labour's Lost, The Merchant of Venice and Separate Tables at the Stratford Festival Theatre, and Arsenic and Old Lace and Dear Antoine at The Grand Theatre in London, Ontario. Neville has also served as artistic director for some of Canada's most prestigious theatres, including The Citadel, Neptune and Stratford Festival Theatres. On Broadway, he co-starred with Liv Ullman in Ghosts, in Tony Randall's production of St. Joan, and in the lead role in Sherlock Holmes for the Broadhurst Theatre. He played Henry Higgins in the national American tour of My Fair Lady. His many film and television apperances include the title character in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the recurring character of The Well-Manicured Man in The X-Files and David Cronenberg's Spider with Ralph Fiennes. His most recent appearance at the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center was in the role of Samson in Milton's Samson Agonistes, directed by Robert Scanlan, in 2003. |
|
|
Robert Scanlan (Director) |
|
| Scanlan has just directed a new production of Julius Caesar (currently running) at the Actors' Shakespeare Project in Boston. As president of the Poets' Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Robert Scanlan has worked with numerous poets and playwrights including Amy Clampitt, Derek Walcott, Robert Pinsky, Seamus Heaney, Joseph Brodsky, Rosanna Warren and Tom Sleigh. His stagings of the work of Samuel Beckett include a production of Krapp's Last Tape, A Piece of Monologue and Ohio Impromptu, for which he won the Boston Theatre Award for Outstanding Director, and three television plays (Eh Joe, Ghost Trio and Nacht und Träume) which toured to the 1996 Beckett Festival in Strasbourg, France. Mr. Scanlan has written a concert adaptation and staged the 20th century première of a recently rediscovered Mozart opera, The Philosopher's Stone. In 1998, after a workshop at An Appalachian Summer Festival, his adaptation and staging of Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's translation of The Inferno of Dante toured the country after opening in New York at the Playhouse 91. He directed a reading of poet Karl Kirchwey's verse drama, then entitled Whatever Happened to Toby Wing?, at An Appalachian Summer Festival in July 2000 and at the Unterberg Poetry center in May 2001. Mr. Scanlan teaches in the English department at Harvard University, and is associated with the ART/Moscow Art Theatre School Institute for Advanced Theatre Training. He was for many years the literary director of Robert Brustein's American Repertory Theatre. |
|
|
| ABOUT THE 92nd STREET, ITS POETS' THEATER AND UNTERBERG POETRY CENTER |
|
| Since Dylan Thomas' legendary reading of his play for voices "Under Milk Wood" at the 92nd Street Y in 1953, the Y has presented verse dramas, plays, and theatrical adaptations of literary texts. Over the years, these performances have evolved into the 92ND STREET Y POETS' THEATER, a series of dramas that emphasize language and the aural experience of theater. Both actors and writers perform in the Poets' Theater: Kathryn Walker, David Strathairn, Blair Brown, Jim Dale, Kate Burton, Michael Cumpsty, Keith David, Paul Hecht, Claire Bloom, Rosemary Harris, and Philip Bosco are just a few of the luminaries who have performed at the Y in recent years. Past productions include Robert Fagles' The Iliad (2005), George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell (2005), Anne Carson's translation of Euripides' Hekabe (2004); This Wooden O: An Evening of Shakespeare (2004); Brian Friel's Faith Healer (2003); Glyn Maxwell's Wolfpit (2002); Anne Carson's translation of Sophocles' Electra (2002); Paul Schmidt's translation of Euripides' Medea (2001); C.K. Williams' The Bacchae of Euripides (2000); Robert Lowell's Prometheus Bound (2000); Derek Walcott's The Odyssey (1993); and Robert Pinsky's The Inferno of Dante (1998). The shows range from concert readings to fully staged productions. The series provides the public with access to great theater by great writers at $16 a ticket. The Poets' Theater is a series of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center. |
|
| For decades, the 92nd Street Y has served as a public literary salon and a place for writers to learn their craft. The legendary 92ND STREET Y UNTERBERG POETRY CENTER opened in 1939 with a reading by William Carlos Williams. Over the years, he was followed by virtually every great 20th century writer — Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, W.H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges and Langston Hughes, to name but a few. Today, the center presents readings by poets, novelists and playwrights, and talks with critics, biographers and scholars. Through its Poets' Theatre, the center produces masterfully written dramas performed by accomplished actors. The center's extensive writing program gives working adults access to teachers who are practicing authors, a rarity outside M.F.A. programs. Community outreach programs offer high-school students access to world-famous authors, and new immigrants literacy-training through literature. Young writers find support at the center through annual readings that pair established writers with emerging writers; and The Discovery/The Nation poetry contest, for poets who have not yet published a book. The Unterberg Poetry Center is part of the 92ND STREET Y TISCH CENTER FOR THE ARTS, endowed through the generous support of the Joan and Preston Robert Tisch family. |
|
| Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders, the 92nd Street Y has grown into a wide-ranging cultural and community center serving people of all races, faiths and backgrounds. The 92nd Street Y's mission is to enrich the lives of the over 300,000 people who visit each year — both in person and through Live from NY's 92nd Street Y!, the Y's satellite broadcast program. The organization' East Side headquarters and West Side outpost, Makor, offer comprehensive performing arts, film and spoken word events; courses in the humanities, arts and Jewish education; activities and workshops for children, teenagers and parents; and health and fitness programs for people of every age. Committed to making its programs available to everyone, the 92nd Street Y awards over $1 million in scholarships annually and reaches out to 6,000 public school children each year through subsidized arts education programs. For more information, visit
www.92Y.org/PRESS. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
© 2008 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
All Rights Reserved. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
