Bristol Riverside Theatre Presents OLD WICKED SONGS, Closes 12/5

Bristol Riverside Theatre presents Old Wicked Songs by Jon Marans on November 16-December 5. Directed by the playwright, the production features BRT Artistic Director Keith Baker and David Kenner.

Previews begin Tuesday, November 16 with opening night on Thursday, November 18. Performances run Tuesday through Sunday until December 5. Tickets start at $31, with discounts for students and groups. Tickets are available visiting brtstage.org or calling the BRT Box Office at 215-785-0100. Bristol Riverside Theatre is located at 120 Radcliffe Street in Bristol, PA.

Old Wicked Songs is the story of Stephen Hoffman, an American piano prodigy who ventures to Vienna to study, hoping to shatter the artistic block that has plagued his career and reconnect with his music. Assigned to a professor he hates and resentful of the simple pieces he's forced to study, it seems impossible that they will ever get along. One is European, one American; one old-fashioned, the other young; one passionate, the other technical; and one an anti-Semite and the other, a Jew. This Pulitzer Prize-nominated drama explores the fascinating connections between art and guilt, compassion and identity as it mirrors the structures and themes of the piece they study -- Schumann's Dichterliebe.

Old Wicked Songs was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won a New York Drama League Award and an LA Drama-Logue Award. It premiered at the Walnut Street Theatre with Marans as the original music director. In New York it was presented at the Barrow Group Theatre and then Promenade Theatre. In London it started at the Bristol Old Vic before transferring to the West End.
Jon Marans (playwright and director)'s newest play, The Temperamentals, was nominated for the 2010 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding New Play, Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play, and earned Marans a nomination for the John Gassner Award. He has also written Jumping for Joy, A Girl Scout World, and the musicals Legacy of the Dragonslayers and Irrationals.

Keith Baker (Professor Josef Mashkan) has appeared in the BRT productions of Defiance, Proof, Hamlet, A Little Night Music, Arsenic and Old Lace, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Elsewhere, recently, he took over the role of Jeeves in the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn musical By Jeeves at the Goodspeed Opera House and appeared on TV in two episodes of Stella for Comedy Central. Baker has been nominated eleven times for the prestigious Carbonell Awards, for which he was twice the recipient for Best Actor. He has directed more than 40 productions for BRT including Chicago (nominated for six Barrymore Awards), The Balkan Women (winner of a Barrymore Award for Outstanding New Play), The Dresser (nominated for a Barrymore Award for Best Director of a Play) and Dear World (nominated for three Barrymore Awards). Prior to coming to BRT, Baker was Artistic Director for the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival and the Florida Repertory Theatre.
David Kenner (Stephen Hoffman) makes his Philadelphia area debut, having appeared most recently in Twelfth Night with Shakespeare in the Park and in Made in Heaven at SoHo Playhouse. Regionally he has performed the leading role in Romeo and Juliet at Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, and in productions at Williamstown Theatre Festival and Stages Repertory Theatre. He is a recent MFT graduate of NYU.

Old Wicked Songs brings together a creative team of BRT veteran Charles Reece as lighting designer, and introduces audiences to set designer Bill Clark.

The BRT mainstage season continues with The Little Prince by Rick Cummins and John Scoullar on January 25-February 13, All My Sons by Arthur Miller on March 15-April 3, and Little Women with book by Allan Knee, music by Jason Howland and lyrics by Mindi Dickstein on May 3-22.

Since 1986, BRT has brought consistently acclaimed professional theatre to Bucks County and maintained a long-term commitment to finding and developing new plays. The theatre is the recipient of over 50 Barrymore Award nominations for Excellence in Theatre, given annually by the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia. In addition to its mainstage productions, the theatre serves as a cultural hub for the community, with such programs as children's theatre, community concerts and exhibitions of local visual arts. Currently under the direction of Artistic Director Keith Baker, Founding Director Susan D. Atkinson, and Managing Director, Amy Kaissar, BRT enters its 24th season. This production is made possible through the generosity of Jacobs Music. For information, visit www.brtstage.org.