David Ferry and Bernard Hopkins Join Hart House's 2011/2012 Season

Hart House Theatre is proud to announce a new partnership with Zadkiel Productions for its 2011/2012 season. Opening in October of 2011, The Gentleman Caller is a world premiere co-written by James Cunningham and former artistic director of Hart House Theatre, Martin Hunter. The star power continues through the team with direction by David Ferry and a starring performance by Bernard Hopkins.

Canadian theatre power-house, David Ferry's career as a director, dramaturge, actor and teacher has taken him to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Broadway and the top theatres across Canada. He won the 2006 Dora Movor Award for Best Director as well as numerous awards for his talents as an actor. Just recently Mr. Ferry received the award for best actor in a play from the inaugural Toronto Theatre Critics' Awards and a Dora nomination for outstanding performance.

The seasoned performer Bernard Hopkins joins the cast in the role of Tennessee Williams. Mr Bernard's extensive experience as an actor, director and master teacher of international reknown includes several decades with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

We are pleased to add The Gentleman Caller to our season and to continue Hart House Theatre's commitment to producing bold, Canadian works. The Gentleman Caller joins the theatre's season as a bonus show for our subscribers (see ticketing information below).

Zadkiel Productions and Hart House Theatre present:
The Gentleman Caller - World Premiere
By James Cunningham and Martin Hunter
Directed by David Ferry
Starring: Bernard Hopkins as Tennessee Williams

Oct 19 - 22, 2011
One week only
Wed to Sat 8pm

Tennessee Williams' meteoric rise began in 1945 with The Glass Menagerie and for fifteen years he produced a string of hits that established him as the foremost American playwright. Then the tide turned as the critics condemned his late plays in scathing terms. Williams descended into a spiraling haze of alcohol, drugs and promiscuity. His innately shy and sensitive personality was replaced by outrageous flamboyance and corrosive wit as he denouncEd Moral hypocrites and corrupt pundits.

The Gentleman Caller begins with the 72 year-old Williams encountering a handsome young stranger who breaks into his apartment and catalyses something in Williams, causing him to revisit his past. Are these hallucinations, dreams or perhaps reality? We watch Williams with the shrill, demanding mother who appears in many of his plays and his sister Rose, the one person who could match him and whom he helplessly watched slip away into schizophrenia.

Every time Williams returns to the present; the stranger is there; a little closer, a little more in controL. Williams can't resist his spell and can only go along until the famous playwright at last finds the connection he's been seeking.

Single Ticket Prices
Adults $35
Students & Seniors $18

BUY TICKETS
The rest of the 2011/2012 Season

The Great American Trailer Park Musical - Toronto Premiere
Music and Lyrics by David Nehls
Book by Betsy Kelso
Sept 23 - Oct 8, 2011
The Great American Trailer Park Musical is a tongue-in-cheek, rockabilly romp filled with strip clubs, hysterical pregnancies and dreams of the Ice Capades. Men collude in death-row hijinks and find love in the bottom of tall-boy beer cans. Women use a whole lot of hairspray while chain-smoking Camels and opening boxes of donuts with their jewel-encrusted, manicured finger-nails. We're talkin' trashy - trailer trashy.
"SouthPark meets Desperate Housewives!" - The New York Sun
"Undeniable fun." - The New York Post
Macbeth
By William Shakespeare
Nov 9 - 26, 2011
Murder, betrayal and the super-natural take centre stage in this timeless epic. "Blood will have blood... I am in blood stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er" says the Scottish hero who becomes Scotland's most notorious king. Macbeth: A horrific tragedy that creeps under the skin and lays bare the dangers of ambition and the corruption of power.

Cabaret
Book by Joe Masteroff
Based on the play by John Van Druten and Stories by Christopher Isherwood
Music by John Kander
Lyrics by Fred Ebb
Jan 13 - 28, 2012
In the midst of Nazi Germany, the cabaret is an oasis where people go to escape reality and share in some scrap of happiness. In the cabaret anything goes: loose women, looser men and a cocktail of drugs, booze and music that keeps the fantasy alive. This dark, sexy musical has played around the world to great acclaim and now Hart House Theatre's skilled, young and dynamic artists will produce the work for the first time the Theatre's long history.

The Night of the Iguana
By Tennessee Williams
Mar 2 - 10, 2012
In Mexico's blistering heat, this story explores a priest's shattered faith and his cataclysmic undoing as he questions the principles with which he has led his life. This American classic features a collection of seemingly unrelated characters that propel us to the end of the proverbial rope in an examination of the limits of polite society.

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