Tom Gualtieri's THAT PLAY: A SOLO MACBETH Re-Opens at Stage Left Studio Tonight
Tom Gualtieri will re-open his critically acclaimed "THAT PLAY: A Solo Macbeth" tonight, April 4 at Cheryl King's Stage Left Studio (214 West 30th Street - 6th Floor) where it will play through Saturday, May 25 with the option to run through July 28, 2013.
Starring Gualtieri, THAT PLAY: A Solo Macbeth is written by Gualtieri and Heather Hill, who also directs this masterpiece. THAT PLAY's original music and sound design is by Billboard chart-topper, Erin Hill.
Gualtieri's blood-drenched, tour-de-force performance dazzles with 19 of the most fascinating characters written for the stage to date while introducing the now infamous Narrator, an omnipotent Ring Master with an agenda of his own.
With The Narrator, Gualtieri and Hill have created a sinfully comic Major Domo who brings the darkness of Shakespeare's bloodiest drama into a whole new light, poking, prodding and carving out the play's central question for modern audiences. How far, The Narrator dares to ask, are we from Macbeth and his wife? What is the darkness in our own souls?
THAT PLAY is no mere solo performance of MACBETH, with one actor playing every character living and dead - though Gualtieri does just that in his performance. The idea for THAT PLAY: A Solo Macbeth presented itself in full bloom to Tom Gualtieri during an advanced acting class in 1998.
Five years of writing, re-writing and workshoping later, Gualtieri first performed THAT PLAY: A Solo Macbeth at the 2003 Midtown InterNational Theatre Festival where it completely sold out its run. He subsequently performed the now-infamous piece at The Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, NY (more raves) and the now-defunct Belt Theatre, NYC (more standing ovations).
Most recently Stage Left Studio's Cheryl King insisted THAT PLAY: A Solo Macbeth be presented as a featured selection in her Left Out Festival after which the show continued to sell out at Stage Left Studio for months through November 19.
It will re-open on Thursday, April 4th by popular demand; fully intending to repeat its previously sold-out success.
By most scholarly accounts, Shakespeare's "Macbeth" had its first public performance at London's Globe Theatre in April 1611. It is a bloodbath of cruelty, tyranny, treachery, violence, guilt, mayhem, bedlam, murder, madness, maelstrom, betrayal, abject arrogance and blind ambition; opening amidst thunder and lightning under which three witches predict regicide, assassination, massacre, insanity and decapitation.
Consumed by ambition and driven into action by his power-mad wife, Macbeth murders the Scottish King Duncan, usurping the throne and crowning Lady Macbeth Queen.
The Macbeths spectacularly spiral downwards as they do away with anyone who might even suspect the now King's unthinkable crime. The body count ascends astronomically until the lady of the house goes to her death completely bonkers days before Macduff beheads Macbeth for slaughtering his innocent family.
Gualtieri plays them all! The dead. The living. The slaughtered. The betrayed. The assassinated. The Kings. The Queens. The Ladies. The Lords. The Thanes. The witches. The servants. The attendants. The Earls. The Generals. He even plays the blood.
Performances take place at the Stage Left Studio, 214 West 30 Street - between Seventh & Eighth Avenues - Sixth Floor:
Thursday, April 4 at 7:30pm
Thursday, April 11 at 7:30pm
Thursday, April 18 at 7:30pm
Thursday, May 2 at 7:30pm
Thursday, May 9 at 7:30pm
Thursday, May 16 at 7:30pm
Saturday, May 25 at 7:30pm
Tickets are $25. For reservations, go to www.stageleftstudio.net.
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