Spoleto Festival Presents Kneehigh's DON JOHN 5/22-6/7

By: Mar. 13, 2009
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International flair, exuberant creativity, and the exploration of intimate worlds are the hallmarks of the Spoleto Festival USA 2009 theater lineup. Headlining the schedule is the UK's Kneehigh Theatre, returning to Charleston with the U.S. premiere of its newest production, Don John, a sharp and sexy retelling of the Don Juan legend. Basil Twist, another festival favorite, returns to present his ingenious and mesmerizing Japanese-inspired Dogugaeshi. Festival first-timers include the Dutch theater group Kassys performing an entertaining send-up of reality-TV culture with the U.S. premiere of Good Cop Bad Cop; Britain's Hoipolloi Theatre in a curiously uplifting rumination on life and death in Story of a Rabbit; and the cabaret punk-rock operetta Addicted to Bad Ideas: Peter Lorre's 20th Century, in which the Brooklyn-based cabaret punk phenomenon World/Inferno Friendship Society explores the rise and fall of a 20th-century archetype, Hollywood film actor Peter Lorre. The 17-day festival takes place in Charleston, SC, May 22-June 7, and tickets are on sale now.

The U.S. Premiere of Kneehigh's Don John

Spoleto Festival USA 2009 welcomes the return of Kneehigh Theatre, one of Britain's most exciting and innovative stage companies. The Cornwall-based troupe is well-known to Spoleto audiences since its triumphant 2006 production of Tristan & Yseult, that year's hands-down critical and popular festival hit. Kneehigh returns with the U.S. premiere of Don John, a highly imaginative new production loosely based on Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. Set in 1970s England, this sizzling retelling of the legend of the world's greatest lover-told from the perspective of his scorned paramours-features Kneehigh's distinctive disregard for convention, generous infusion of comedy, and intense emotional expression.

Don John may become the festival's most-talked about production: since the play's December 2008 world premiere in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Don John has been playing to full theaters and critical acclaim throughout the UK. "Magnificent," declared The Financial Times, "the finest Kneehigh production I have seen." Manchester City Life called the production "as energetic, exhilarating, anarchic and sexy an entertainment as anyone could wish." And the Birmingham Post applauded the play's exuberant theatricality, blending "live rock music, flashing lights, movement and design into a fairground ride for our times." Don John, a co-production with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Bristol Old Vic, will be performed 19 times May 21 through June 7 at Memminger Auditorium, and is sponsored by First Citizens.

 

Also Returning in 2009 to Spoleto Festival USA

The American puppeteer and director Basil Twist garnered rave reviews in 2005 for his delightful festival production of Respighi's La bella dormente nel bosco (Sleeping Beauty). Twist returns to Spoleto Festival USA this spring with the elegant and dreamlike Dogugaeshi, which both revives and pays homage to the rarefied Japanese stage technique of the same name. The technique features a series of intricately painted sliding screens that layer by layer reveal a rich and expansive universe in miniature. A beautiful white fox puppet (the spirit of Japanese folklore) and the music of shamisen virtuoso Yumiko Tanaka accompany the production, presented 13 times from May 30 to June 7 in an intimate black-box theater built specially for the production in the Gaillard Exhibition Hall. Dogugaeshi is sponsored by Charleston Place.


New to Festival Audiences in 2009

The adventurous Dutch theater ensemble Kassys introduces Spoleto audiences to its brand of wry irony and fearless humor in the U.S. premiere of Good Cop Bad Cop. Billed as an "animal study of humans," the play combines live performance with film in a comical depiction of today's reality-TV culture, in which mundane encounters generate high-intensity drama and ordinary events become extraordinary when sensationalized for the camera. The talented trio of Kassys performers employs its uncanny gift for self deprecation and sharp eye for human frailties to hilarious and charming effect. Good Cop Bad Cop will be shown from June 3 through June 7 at the Emmett Robinson Theatre.

In Hoipolloi Theatre's Spoleto debut, Welsh artist Hugh Hughes performs the winsome and poignant Story of a Rabbit, which won the coveted Fringe First Award following a sold-out 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival run. With panache and an endearingly British sense of humor, Hughes chronicles how two very different but related deaths-the inconvenient demise of his neighbor's rabbit and the more far tragic passing of his father-forced him to confront one of life's most challenging topics. Weaving together narrative with projections and live music, the masterful storyteller creates a comic yet moving tableau about the complexities of death and the joys of the here and now. Story of a Rabbit will be performed May 22 through May 25 at the Emmett Robinson Theatre at the College of Charleston. On May 24 Hugh Hughes talks with Martha Teichner as part of her Conversations With series, at the Simons Center Recital Hall at College of Charleston.

Rounding out the Spoleto Festival USA 2009 theater program, World/Inferno Friendship Society presents the energetic cabaret punk operetta Addicted to Bad Ideas: Peter Lorre's 20th Century. In collaboration with contemporary theater's wunderkind director Jay Scheib, the eclectic punk band offers up a furious song cycle about The Life of Peter Lorre, the actor who came to fame portraying sinister villains in classics like Casablanca before succumbing to a downward spiral of depression, bankruptcy and addiction. Led by the smooth vocals of the charismatic Jack Terricloth, WIFS and its swinging nine-piece band paint a vivid and infectiously enjoyable multimedia picture of the 20th century from an outsider's view. Addicted to Bad Ideas will be performed May 27 through May 31 at the Emmett Robinson Theater. On May 31 Jack Terricloth will join Martha Teichner for the festival's Conversations With series, at the Emmett Robinson Theatre.

Tickets

To purchase tickets, call (843) 579-3100 or visit www.spoletousa.org. Tickets may also be purchased in person at the Spoleto Box Office in the Gaillard Auditorium, 77 Calhoun Street, beginning Monday, April 20, 2009.



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