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This holiday season, Berkeley Repertory Theatre presents a deliciously silly world premiere from beloved Bay Area artists: Lemony Snicket's The Composer is Dead begins previews in the Roda Theatre on November 26, opens December 2, and closes January 15. The show features text by bestselling author Lemony Snicket and a score by living composer Nathaniel Stookey. It was conceived for the stage by Lemony Snicket, Phantom Limb Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko, co-artistic directors, Tony Taccone, and Geoff Hoyle.
Taccone, Berkeley Rep's artistic director, is also staging the show. "This may be the most ambitious project I've ever worked on because of the way it combines live performance, film, puppets, and music," he comments. "It's a fun show for the whole family that unfolds in the ironic world of Lemony Snicket, a writer who is completely eccentric, wildly imaginative, and equal parts humor and smarts. I'm delighted to team up with Geoff Hoyle once again, and enjoying the challenge of working with puppets. As a director, you tell them what their motivation is and you get nothing but the same facial expressions. Fortunately, we have the brilliant folks from Phantom Limb to create the puppets as well as the sets and the costumes."
Lemony Snicket remarks: "Once Berkeley Rep had a long and proud tradition of presenting some of the most exciting and engaging theater in the land, and Phantom Limb had a reputation as an emerging and dynamic force in the world of puppetry and design. I am sad to report that this new production brings these traditions and reputations to sorry ends. The Composer Is Dead began its life as a composition for narrator and orchestra, written in collaboration with living composer Nathaniel Stookey and, to our surprise and horror, performed all over the world by various symphony orchestras who lived to regret it. One would have thought that would be the end of it, but Berkeley Rep, in a fit of madness for which the East Bay is well-known, has revived and reinvented this work for audiences of all ages, as all ages will be equally depressed over this sorry spectacle. Please join me in the cheap seats of Berkeley Rep's crowded and crumbling theatre, so that together we, the audience viewing this sorry spectacle, might cry out the only thing that might save us: 'Fire!'"
The show must go on? But the actor is mute, the director is crying, the dancer is lazy - and the composer is dead! When Lemony Snicket teamed up with Nathaniel Stookey to create an orchestral work - and accompanying book - the result proved wildly popular. "A hugely enjoyable undertaking for young and old alike... the piece seems destined to become a classic," predicted the San Francisco Chronicle. Now there's a new theatrical adaptation of Lemony Snicket's The Composer is Dead. Tony Taccone's raucous production unleashes laughs through classic clowning and plenty of uppity puppets from the pioneering Phantom Limb Company. When Geoff Hoyle pops up as an outlandish inspector bent on solving a murderous riddle, the show crescendos into comic absurdity. To the delight of children and adults alike, The Composer is Dead comes alive on stage.
