FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE &
BROADCAST Press
contact only: Dawn Flood (831) 755-6976 publicity@westernstage.com Please see release for all appropriate public
information
Shakespeare in
The Western Stage continues its 2006 season with on August 4 with Ken
Ludwig’s frenetic farce Shakespeare in
Hollywood. After a wrong turn lands Oberon and Puck on the film set of Max
Reinhardt’s 1934 production of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, the two are drafted to play themselves in the film
alongside silver screen stars James Cagney and Olivia De Havilland. Shakespeare in Hollywood plays through
August 27 in the Studio Theater at Hartnell College and then extends its run
September 8-10 at the Sunset Center in Carmel. To reserve your seats for
performances at Hartnell College call the ticket office at 375-2111 or visit
westernstage.com. Tickets for the Sunset Center performances can be purchased
at the TWS ticket office, by calling 620-2048 or online at sunsetcenter.org. Be sure to ask about the Benefit Gala and
Auction at the Sunset Center on September 9! (144 Word PSA)
Salinas, CA — May 7, 2006
Shakespeare
in Hollywood is definitely not your
high school teacher’s Shakespeare.
This hyperactive, intoxicated, bawdy, and madcap tour
de force by playwright Ken Ludwig is the kind of farce that will have every
seat in the house rocking with laughter. Its very premise, in fact, sounds like
the set-up for a joke. What happens when Oberon and Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream accidentally
stumble onto a 1934
As with last season’s production of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, The Western Stage will be
sharing this play’s manic fun with the entire
According to director William J. Wolak, who recently
had the opportunity to meet and hear the playwright speak at the Kennedy
Center’s annual American College Theatre Festival Conference, Ludwig uses one
of the most tried and true comedic devices to create his mayhem in Shakespeare in Hollywood: the clash of opposites.
“Ludwig juxtaposes the ridiculous, improbable, and
the profane,” says Wolak. It is a play that not only explores the clash of
mythical literary characters with equally mythical tinsel town stars, but also
the clash of Max Reinhardt, a sophisticated German director whose English is
rudimentary at best, as he tries to direct one of the greatest works in English
literature with a motley cast that consists of the dim-witted girlfriend of
studio mogul Jack Warner, the mischievous woodland faerie Puck who has gone
totally Hollywood (sunglasses and all), and James Cagney, known for his tough
guy parts in gangster films, suddenly sporting form fitting tights as Bottom,
the Weaver.
Yet for Wolak, a professor of theatre arts at the
University of the Pacific, the play is not just fun and games. The characters
have legitimate, if fanciful, conflicts. “There’s genuine romance,” says Wolak.
“Oberon, a god, falls in love with a mortal woman on the movie set. Now that
poses a problem.” This conflict Wolak refers to in the play, of course, not
only mirrors the plot of A Midsummer
Night’s Dream itself, but also the Greek and Roman myths Shakespeare used
as source material for his own play. (For more, see supplemental
article.)
For Ludwig, a former corporate lawyer turned
playwright who devotes an hour every weekend to reading Shakespeare, writing
this play was a labor of love…and, at times, loss. Although originally
commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) to write the play, Ludwig’s
work never got off the ground at Britain’s most revered theater due to
political changes in the company—namely the dismissal of Adrian Noble, the
artistic director who had taken the risk of commissioning this off-beat play
for such a traditionally conservative company. Luckily, the Arena Stage in
To reserve seats for Shakespeare in Hollywood during its
Tickets for the
The Western Stage continues its 2006 season this fall
with Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing in
September, Big River: the Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn and the classic courtroom drama Inherit the Wind in October; and Lionel Bart’s beloved musical Oliver!
in December.
Dan
Tarker Literary Associate