New Globe Revives Paul Shyre's Plays in Rep Nov.24-Dec.23

Off-Broadway's The New Globe Theatre, Inc. is pleased to announce the 50th anniversary revivals of Paul Shyre's stage adaptations of I Knock at the Door and Pictures in the Hallway, based on Sean O'Casey's best-selling autobiographies.  Both plays received their premieres in 1956/1957 and were originally directed by Stuart Vaughan, who recreates his original staging.  This fully-rehearsed staged concert presentation, running in rotating repertory, features Salome Jens and Gil Rogers with John FitzGibbon, Grant Kretchik, Nancy McNulty, and Craig Rising with set and lighting by Bart Healy.  Performances begin Saturday, November 24 for a 5-week limited engagement through Sunday, December 23 at Theater Three (311 West 43rd Street, 3rd Floor).

Six accomplished actors, on six stools, in a fully-rehearsed staged concert presentation of Sean O'Casey's acclaimed autobiographies, bring the Dublin of the great wordsmith's youth alive – a vivid gallery of rogues, patriots, saints, and hypocrites. With perspective and wit, we meet a young O'Casey who surmounts poverty, and illness, fighting with spunky humor to swim upstream in a society divided by nationality, class, religion, and ignorance. 

"I Knock at the Door brings Johnny Cassidy into the world – the world of 19th Century Dublin, with its horse-drawn trams and outdoor toilets, its pubs and parades, its Catholics versus its Protestants.  Where did the boy with the diseased eyes find the pluck, guts, and humor to shoulder his way into productive life?  We get to know the mother who stood guard over him, the scholar father who died so young but left his books, the doctors who helped the boy, and those who greatly hindered him," explain press notes.

"Pictures in the Hallway (1957 Drama Desk Award) brings us the lively tale of an adolescent Johnny initiated into the rough and tumble of Dublin's adult world by a series of life-changing events.  First job -- in his early teens, because it's a fatherless home where every penny counts; first politics -- in a society where even the singing of certain songs was a punishable offense; first sex – a reaching out for freedom in a world still gripped by repressive morals and sexual fear.  O'Casey shares his joys, pain, discoveries and hopes as he traverses these rites of passage.  As we vicariously join him, we relive our own initiations," explain press notes.

I Knock at the Door and Pictures in the Hallway will play the following performance schedule in rotating repertory:  Wednesdays - Fridays at 8PM, Saturdays at 3PM & 8PM and Sundays at 3PM at Theater Three (311 West 43rd Street, 3rd Floor).  Both plays will be performed on Saturdays in repertory.  Tickets are $40 and $15 for students (with valid I.D.) and may be purchased by calling TicketCentral at 212-279-4200, online at www.ticketcentral.com or at the Ticket Central Box Office (416 West 42nd Street).

Photos: Gil Rogers and Salome Jens