The Production Company Presents THE YOUNG MAN FROM ATLANTA, 3/11

 

Producer T L Kolman just announced a very exciting cast and crew line-up for The Production Company's LA Premiere of Horton Foote's Pulitzer Prize-winning mystery-drama THE YOUNG MAN FROM ATLANTA.  The production headlines Dick DeCoit (Academy Award Nominee: Best Short Subject, DramaLogue Performance Award, Free Press Nomination - Best Actor), and Eileen Barnett (Broadway, Reprise!, and MTG) as the ubiquitous Will and Lily Dale Kidder, and Hap Lawrence (Reprise!, Pasadena Playhouse, and Coast Playhouse) as Uncle Pete.  This power-house trio is  supported by excellent performances from Nicole J. Butler, Geoff James, David RoBert May, Cyndi Martino  and Jonathan Strait.  ...ATLANTA is directed by TheProdCo's Artistic Director August Viverito, and is produced & assistant directed by T L Kolman.  The design team is top-notch as well:  Set by Bryan Forrest, Lighting by Ric Zimmerman and costumes by The Production Company's new Resident Costume Designer Shon LeBlanc.
 
1950; a comfortable suburb of Houston.  The well-upholstered fortress of the Kidder's lives is suddenly under siege, ...and from a number of directions. In the play's first scene, Will Kidder loses his job of many years, just as he's sunk a bundle into a new house.  And he and his wife Lily Dale have yet to come to terms with the death of their 37-year-old son and only child, Bill, who lived in Atlanta and drowned during a business trip to Florida.

Since Bill couldn't swim, the death was a mystery.  Probably a suicide. Why?  His mother and father don't have a clue. But the young man of the play's title, who was Bill's roommate and who is never actually seen, has words of comfort for the parents, if they choose to listen. Will does not; Lily Dale does, even at the cost of deceiving her husband and giving the young man money to help out with an assortment of bogus-sounding crises. And in one bald declaration, Will, when Lily Dale speculates on just what hold the young man from Atlanta had over their son, answers: 'I don't want to know what it is.  Ever.'

It may be hard to believe in the age of Oprah and the memoir of dysfunction, but there has always been an American school of positive thought that suggests that if you don't talk about certain aspects of life, then they don't exist.  This creed of evasion has consistently informed Mr. Foote's dialogue, and it's particularly in evidence here.   You feel you've known every one of these characters for ages, even as you acknowledge Mr. Foote's point that really knowing them is impossible.
 
THE PRODUCTION DETAILS
THE YOUNG MAN FROM ATLANTA opens on Friday, March 11th, 2011 and runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM and Sundays at 3 PM for an initial six week run.  No performance Sunday, March 13th.  Tickets may be purchased at www.theprodco.com or 1-800-838-3006.   Tickets are $25 and advance purchase is highly recommended.   For further information, call The Production Company at (323) 871-1150.  The Lex Theatre - 6760 Lexington Avenue, Hollywood, CA 9038.   One block north of Santa Monica Boulevard,  just East of Highland Avenue.
 

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