Aux Dog Season Wraps with FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIR DE LUNE
By: Julie Musbach May. 29, 2018
"People are given one moment to connect. Not two, not three, one! They don't take it, it's gone forever..." as Johnny implores Frankie in Terrance McNally's sweet and spicy two-hander, Frankie and Johnny at the Clair de Lune, about a short-order cook and the waitress he romances.
Johnny's fallen head-over-heels with the reluctant, wary and time-worn Frankie. For her, it's a one-night stand. For him, it's love-everlasting.
This warm, weary, wonderful pas-de-deux brings to life two lonely souls, both eager and terrified of reaching out to each other for their last chance at love and happiness. Johnny is the hopeless romantic who quotes Shakespeare and teases, seduces, challenges and cooks for his lady-love, in an attempt to win her heart as well as her hand. Traditionally, it's the male who must court the female and Frankie is unwilling, hardened and deeply hurt.
The play is an intensely intimate, gutsy and funny will-they-or-won't they-live-happily-ever-after romantic comedy with colorfully drawn characters of tremendous warmth and truth and vitality.
The production is directed by Kristine Holtvedt who returns from her position as head of Purdue University's MFA Acting Program to the Aux Dog where she directed the following past productions: Venus in Fur (Best Production of 2013 The Journal); Rapture, Blister, Burn; and the hugely popular summer hit Nunsense.
The play will feature Jessica Osbourne who was seen in Shirley Valentine, Blown Sideways Through Life, Boeing Boeing, and Little Shop of Horrors and Mike Long who is a popular local stand-up comedian who has appeared on NBC with Steven Michael Quezeda and has featured for Doug Stanhope.
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune was the winner of the Dramatists Guild Hull Warriner Award, and the 1991 movie version starred Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer and the play was subsequently revived on Broadway in 2002 with Edie Falco and Stanley Tucci in the title roles. A critical and popular success, this bittersweet comedy combines poignancy and laughter as it traces the unlikely romance that begins to develop between two middle-aged "losers."
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