New Jersey Rep Closes the Curtain on YANKEE TAVERN, 5/23

Yankee Tavern by Steven Dietz, a taught comic thriller from one of America's leading contemporary playwrights, will end its premiere at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, May 23, 2010.

Adam, a young grad student on the fast track toward marriage and a career in the CIA, has temporarily taken his late father's place behind the bar at the Yankee Tavern, an old gin joint in lower Manhattan whose imminent date with the wrecking ball will only be an improvement. Along with the bar, Adam has inherited his dad's friend Ray, an apparently schizophrenic, "itinerant homesteader" who is a perpetual font of conspiracy theories-about Starbucks, the moon landing, Yoko Ono and the Bay of Pigs. Ray even talks to dead people in the abandoned hotel upstairs where he flops. Adam takes it all in with protective affection and a large grain of salt, his only concern being for Ray's fate following the building's demolition, and a nagging doubt about the circumstances of his father's death. Then Palmer arrives, a mysterious stranger who seems to know far too much about the 9/11 attacks. Suddenly, Ray's ranting does not seem nearly so far off base; in fact, it is hitting much too close to home. But the intrigue doesn't end there. When all the save-the-date cards from Adam's side of the guest list come back as Addressee Unknown, his fiancée Janet starts to wonder how well she really knows her intended. Will monumental secrets be brought to light before the walls come down on the Yankee Tavern or will they be buried in the rubble? And will anyone leave the theater with the same trust in what they are told, or even in what they can see with their own eyes?

Directed by NJ Rep Artistic Director Suzanne Barabas, Yankee Tavern features Jason Odell Williams as Adam; Pheonix Vaughn as Janet; Jim Shankman as Ray; and Michael Irvin Pollard as Palmer. Stage manager is Rose Riccardi; scenic design and properties by Jessica Parks; lighting design by Jill Nagle; costume design by Patricia E. Doherty; music and sound design by Merek Royce Press. Assistant stage manager is Kelly Farah.

Playwright Steven Dietz is the recipient of the PEN U.S.A. Award in Drama for his widely performed work Lonely Planet; the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award for Fiction and Still Life With Iris; the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Award for The Rememberer; and the 2007 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery for his adaptation of William Gillette's and Arthur Conan Doyle's 1899 play Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, among other honors, and a two-time finalist (for Last of the Boys and Becky's New Car) for the prestigious Steinberg New Play Award given by the American Theatre Critics Association.

New Jersey Repertory Company is a year-round, professional non-profit theater, a member of the National New Play Network, New Jersey Theater Alliance, Theater Communications Group, and the Monmouth and Long Branch Arts Councils.

YANKEE TAVERN by Steven Dietz

Phone: 732-229-3166 URL: www.njrep.org/plays/yankeetavern.htm

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