A PICASSO Runs at Promenade Playhouse, Now thru 2/15

A Picasso by Jeffrey Hatcher opens in January at the Promenade Playhouse at 1404 3rd Street Promenade, Santa Monica, 90401. The play runs Friday's and Saturday's at 8 p.m. tonight, January 10th and January 11th, 17th, 18th, and 31st and February 1st, 7th, 8th, 14th, and 15th. There will be a preview performance on Thursday, January 9th at 8 p.m. Opening night is Friday, January 10th, and will be followed by a reception. Tickets for A Picasso are $20 and available at: www.plays411.com/apicasso or by calling 323-960-7740.

This cat and mouse drama revolves around art, politics, sex, and truth. How timely, now 40 years after Picasso's death and as Museu Picasso in Barcelona celebrates the 50th year of being open, the intriguing relationship between art, history and politics is again in the news with the discovery recently of over 1400 paintings looted by the Nazis. Picasso's disdain for the German occupation of Paris was often reflected in his work. In Hatcher's A Picasso, three of Picasso's paintings have been "confiscated" by the Nazis from their Jewish owners. The Nazi Ministry of Propaganda considers Picasso's art degenerate and assigns a wily interrogator, Miss Fischer (Natalia Lazarus) to persuade Picasso (Vincent Lappas) to confirm the paintings are real. She tells him they are planning an exhibition but when Picasso realizes it is actually a burning, he becomes desperate to save his work by calling on all of his talents to out wit her.

Picasso has left us over 50,000 pieces of exceptional art, including 33 Picassos donated by the son of Estee Lauder, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which will be exhibited in 2014. Additionally, a collection of paintings worth more than one billion dollars, recently discovered in Germany. Among those original Picasso works, and those that survived not being burnt by the Nazis, are all an important element which is what the play deals with.

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