Northern Ireland's preeminent theatre company, Belfast's Lyric Theatre, presents the U.S. premiere of a new play by Janet Behan, "Brendan at the Chelsea," about the controversial playwright Brendan Behan, in the turbulent last weeks of his short life, when he lived in New York at the Chelsea Hotel. Portraying Behan is the noted actor Adrian Dunbar, who also directs the five-character drama. This is Dunbar's professional NY stage debut, and it is also the Lyric Theatre's debut production in New York.
"Brendan at the Chelsea" plays a limited five-week engagement from Wednesday September 4 through Sunday October 6, at the Acorn Theatre, 410 West 42nd Street, on Theatre Row. The show's Off-Broadway opening is set for Sunday September 8 at 3pm. The Off-Broadway run launches a multi-city tour across Ireland, which will include Dublin, a return to Belfast, and will culminate in Derry in November. This year Derry celebrates becoming the inaugural UK City of Culture, a quadrennial designation. "We wanted to start this important tour for the Lyric in New York where, in a true sense, this story all begins," says Richard Croxford, the Lyric's artistic director. "New York is the place where it could be said the very unhappy Behan was the happiest." Featured in the cast with Dunbar are Pauline Hutton, Richard Orr, Samantha Pearl, and Chris Robinson, who vividly depict some of the characters who inhabited the Chelsea in its early 60's heyday as a breeding ground for bohemian creativity. Was this right place for the author of the immensely successful "The Hostage" to forge ahead with his still promising career? Would the Chelsea and an indulgent New York nurture this angry rebel, helping him come to terms with his demons about his drinking and his sex addictions (and possible bi-sexuality)? Maybe so, but a phone call from Dublin, will force him to return home, where he will be dead at 41 in a matter of weeks.Videos