In response to popular demand, the first New York revival in 38 years of The Mutilated by Tennessee Williams will extend to December 1. Directed by Cosmin Chivu and starring legendary avant-garde performers Mink Stole and Penny Arcade, the production features original music composed by Jesse Selengut, performed by the three-piece combo Tin Pan. In anticipation of the production's opening, Charles Isherwood in The New York Times wrote, "What Penny Arcade and Mink Stole will make of Williams's radiantly lurid characters could well be one of the livelier sideshows in a theatrical season rich in promising double acts."
Like nearly all of Williams's later, more experimental plays, The Mutilated was met with stinging reviews, disappointment and even anger when it premiered on Broadway in 1966 (with The Gnädiges Fräulein, under the collective title Slapstick Tragedy). "I know Mr. Williams is trying to do something ambitious and ambiguous but, gee, I wish he would just give us something old and square like A Streetcar Named Desire," wrote John McClain in the New York Journal-American.
The Mutilated is one of the funniest, strangest, most neglected and most moving of
Tennessee Williams's later plays. In a 1965 article in Esquire, Williams said of The Mutilated, "The style is kin to vaudeville, burlesque and slapstick, with a dash of pop art thrown in," and called it an "allegory on the tragicomic subject of human existence on this risky planet."
Performances of The Mutilated will take place November 1-December 1 (see schedule above) at the New Ohio Theatre. Critics are welcome as of Thursday, November 7 for an official opening of Sunday, November 10 at 7pm. The running time is 90 minutes with no intermission. New Ohio Theatre is located at 154 Christopher Street in Manhattan. Tickets are $35 and can be purchased by visiting
newohiotheatre.org or calling
888.596.1027.
The Mutilated takes place on Christmas Eve in New Orleans in the late 1940s, and centers on Trinket Dugan (Stole), a Texas oil heiress and cancer survivor, who is hiding away at the Silver Dollar Hotel with a painful secret; and her buxom buddy Celeste Delacroix Griffin (Arcade), a vagrant, shoplifter, and over-the-hill (though always hopeful) prostitute who is Trinket's only real friend and the only person who knows her secret. But their friendship has been pushed to the limit; Celeste wants money, a free meal, a jug of California tokay wine, and takes anything she can bully, bribe or blackmail from Trinket. When Trinket finds out Celeste has humiliated her by broadcasting her secret around the Quarter, the battle is on and they fight cruelly among the singing "Quarter Rats" - con men, hookers, cops, freaks, sailors, and drunks - until they find a way to resuscitate their friendship just in time to share a mystical experience that changes their lives.
Additional cast members of The Mutilated include Warren Bub as Maxie, Jonelle Rheubottom as the Bird Girl, Tom Drummer as Bernie,
Niko Papastefanou as Bruno, Patrick Darwin Williams as Slim, Jesse Selengut as Jack in Black, and Alec Funiciello, Jon Wayne Martin, Randall Holloway,
Alex Nicholson, Kennebrew Taylor,
Amanda Salazar, and Ashley Burroughs as members of the chorus/ensemble.
The creative team includes
Anka Lupes (Sets),
Angela Wendt (Costumes),
Graham Kindred (Lights), Lauren Gaul (Choreographer),
Laura Malseed (Stage Manager),
Dana Greenfield (Assistant Director), and
Thomas Keith (Creative Producer). Produced by New Ohio Theatre and
Beth Bartley Productions.
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