'Harry in Love' at the Brick Theatre Starts July 31st

Before he became known as the writer-director-designer of his groundbreaking and legendary abstract stage spectacles, Richard Foreman was seen as a promising playwright in a more, shall we say, traditional mode, writing "normal" plays with standard structures, characters, settings, and events, unlike those that he was to become known for from 1968 onward.
 
In 1966, he wrote HARRY IN LOVE: A Manic Vaudeville, which came very close to having a Broadway run with Vincent Gardenia in the eponymous role (though Foreman had hoped for Alec Guinness in the role – that of a large, manic, Bronx-born, Jewish New Yorker, which is a hint to the creative conflicts that kept the show from being staged at that time).  This "boulevard comedy" as Foreman calls it (he also compares it, accurately, to the 1960s plays of Murray Schisgal) remained unseen for over 30 years, until Foreman gave it to director/actor Ian W. Hill  in 1999, for the third of the No Strings Attached festivals of Foreman's plays that Hill produced at the Nada spaces on Ludlow Street, saying that the part of Harry was a good one for Hill to play and he should do the show – which he did, to appreciative audiences and excellent reviews, for a very short run, the only run this obscure work has ever had.
 
Now, HARRY IN LOVE is back, with half of the cast of the '99 production, for a slightly-longer run in a slightly-larger production.
 
The plot?  Harry Rosenfeld is a big, neurotic, unnerved and unnerving man who believes his wife, Hilda, is planning to cheat on him (and he seems to be right). His response: drug her coffee and keep her knocked out until her paramour goes away. The plan works about as well as should be expected and, over several days, a number of people – the paramour, a doctor, Hilda's brother, and an "innocent" bystander - are sucked into Harry's manic, snowballing energy as it becomes an eventual avalanche of (hysterically funny) psychosis.
 
While we're probably lucky and much better-off to have the Foreman we've had, it's fascinating to see this (extremely funny) play which very well might have meant a very different career for Foreman if it had made in to Broadway. It's not what you probably know from him, but it still sounds like the Richard Foreman anyone would know from his later work – almost any line from this play, out of context, would not sound at all out of place in one of his later, abstract plays. Really.
 
Director Ian W. Hill has created 56 stage productions since 1997 with his company Gemini CollisionWorks, including works by Richard Foreman, T.S. Eliot, Clive Barker, Mac Wellman, Ronald Tavel, Jeff Goode, Mark Spitz, and Edward D. Wood, Jr., as well as several original plays.  As a designer (light, sound, projections, sets) and technical/artistic consultant he has worked with many other stage artists and theatres for almost 20 years, and he is currently the technical director of The Brick.  He will also be presenting two original plays in rep with Harry in Love in August at The Brick:  Spell and Everything Must Go.
 
HARRY IN LOVE plays at  The Brick (575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211)  from July 31, August 2, 8, 14, 17, and 22 at 7.30 pm; August 10, 16, 24 at 4.00 pm. All tickets $15.00. Tickets available at the door or through theatermania.com (212-352-3101 or toll-free: 1-866-811-4111)