Cape Playhouse to Continue Season with TALLEY'S FOLLY

The Cape Playhouse's 90th season continues with Talley's Folly, Lanford Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winner, starring Emily Kunkel and Ron Menzel. Directed by Skip Greer, it plays June 21 through July 2, with press night set for Tuesday, June 21 at 7:30 pm.

Talley's Folly is a warm and humorous story of two lost souls who find each other in a deserted Victorian boathouse. It is 1944 in Lebanon, Missouri, and Matt Friedman knows that being a middle-aged Jewish accountant from St. Louis isn't going to win over the hearts of Sally Talley's family. Yet he refuses to accept her rebuffs, and gradually they discover a union rare in human relationships. A play about finding love when you've stopped looking,

New York based actress Emily Kunkel plays Sally Talley. She has performed regionally at Geva Theatre, Barrington Stage, Shakespeare Theater of NJ and Actors Theater of Louisville as well as in New York at New York Theatre Workshop, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Ontological-Hysteric and The Upright Citizens Brigade. TV credits include HBO's "Nurse Jackie." She is a graduate of Fordham University at Lincoln Center as well as the Actors Theater of Louisville apprentice program and is a founding member of Hook and Eye Theatre Co.

Ron Menzel is Matt Friedman. This is Ron's second appearance at The Playhouse, having appeared in Almost, Maine in 2014. Other credits include work with The Guthrie Theatre, South Coast Rep, Geva Theatre, Ten Thousand Things, Studio Theatre, Huldufolk Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Jungle Theatre, City Theatre, Mixed Blood and Eye of the Storm Theatre.

Talley's Folly is directed by Skip Greer, who directed last season's The Velocity of Autumn. Previously at The Playhouse he directed Freud's Last Session and Almost, Maine. The design team includes Michael Anania (scenic design), Gail Baldoni (costume design), John Bartenstein (lighting design), and Jeff Sherwood (sound design).

Lanford Wilson was a Pulitzer Prize-winning, American playwright, whose work, as described by the New York Times, was "earthy, realist, greatly admired [and] widely performed." Wilson also helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement with his earliest plays, which were first produced in New York at the Caffe Cino beginning in 1964. He was one of the first playwrights to move from Off-Off-Broadway, to Off-Broadway, then Broadway and beyond. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980 and was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame. In 2004, Wilson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a Master American Dramatist. He was nominated for three Tony Awards and has won a Drama Desk Award and five Obie Awards. His 1964 short play, The Madness of Lady Bright, was his first significant success and led to further works throughout the 1960s that expressed a variety of social and romantic themes. In 1969, he was a co-founder of Circle Repertory Company, for which he wrote many plays in the 1970s. His 1973 play, The Hot l Baltimore, was the company's first major hit with both audiences and critics; its Off-Broadway run exceeded 1,000 performances. Wilson's Fifth of July was first produced at Circle Rep in 1978; for its Broadway production opening in 1980, he received a Tony Award nomination. A prequel, Talley's Folly (1979 at Circle Rep.), opened on Broadway before Fifth of July and won him the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and his first Tony nomination. Burn This (1987) was another Broadway success. Wilson also wrote the libretti for several 20th-century operas. In later years, he lived mostly in Sag Harbor on Long Island and continued to write plays into the 21st century.

Playing June 21 through July 2, performances are Monday through Wednesday evenings at 7:30 pm, Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8:00 pm, with matinees on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 4:00 pm.

Tickets begin at $35.00, and can be purchased at CapePlayhouse.com, at the Cape Playhouse Box Office (820 Main Street, Route 6A, Dennis, MA), or by phone at 508-385-3911.

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