Transatlantic Liaison Extends Off-Bway Through April 15

By: Mar. 14, 2006
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Transatlantic Liaison, Fabrice Rozie's new play about French existentialist writer Simone de Beauvoir and her passionate, volatile love affair with American novelist Nelson Algren has extended its Off-Broadway premiere through April 15 at Theater Row's Harold Clurman Theater (410 West 42nd Street). The show was initially scheduled to run through April 2.

Directed by John McLean (who has helmed many productions in France) the show features Elizabeth Rothan (winner of the Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum Award, Cymbeline, Top Girls in New York) as Simone de Beauvoir and Matthew S. Tompkins (three-time recipient of the Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum Award for Best Actor) as Algren, "the hard-living writer who lived on and wrote about Chicago's South Side, and with whom de Beauvoir had the most passionate, star-crossed affair of her life," according to press notes. The off-Broadway production reunites director McLean with Rothan and Tompkins, who starred in the play's U.S. premiere at Theatre Three in Dallas in 2003.

Rozié has long been fascinated with the love life of Simone de Beauvoir, best known as writer of the revolutionary, incendiary feminist essay, The Second Sex (published in 1949). Beauvoir's lifelong sexual and intellectual partnership with the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was twenty-years in progress when, in 1947, she met and fell deeply in love with Nelson Algren, the still under-appreciated writer best known for his novel The Man with the Golden Arm. The play "provides insights into how Beauvoir forged her identity -- as an artist, intellectual and woman of passion. This new play is Beauvoir's story of love beyond conventions of marriage, or of adultery, sifting details from her published letters to Nelson Algren and her novel inspired by their relationship, The Mandarins. At her death in 1986, Beauvoir asked to be buried beside Sartre at Montparnasse wearing Algren's ring. Algren died alone in Sag Harbor, NY in 1981."
 
Presented Off-Broadway by Treetop Productions, Transatlantic Liaison has scenic and lighting design by David Lovett; and features original music by Areski Belkacem, a French composer best-known for his collaborations with singer, writer and actress Brigitte Fontaine.
 
In addition to her major works The Second Sex, The Mandarins and Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) edited the political journal "Les Temps Modernes" with Sartre. Her work, A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren, was published posthumously in 1998. Algren wrote works such as Never Come Morning and A Walk on the Wild Side in addition to The Man with the Golden Arm.
 
The show runs Mondays, Wednesdays-Fridays at 8pm; Saturdays at 2 and 8pm; and Sundays at 3pm (no performances on Tuesdays). Tickets are $45. For tickets, visit TicketCentral.com or call 212-279-4200.

Photo by Carol Rosegg

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