Watch
KOB-TV "Good Day New Mexico" interview with
director Fred Franklin
at 2:25
Listen to KUNM's Spencer
Beckwith's interview with
director Fred Franklin on
"Performance New Mexico"
“It was I who invented American
black comedy,” the great Mr. Williams
noted in his memoirs. FUSION reignites
its love affair with the American playwright
as it presents the New Mexico premiere
of his unique four-woman play A
Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur.
As Williams sets out in what may appear
to be a humorous
deconstruction of earlier work, he infuses
Dorothea, a high school civics teacher
consumed by incessant physical exercise
and waiting
for a very important phone call, with the
soul of a Blanche DuBois. Joining her in
desperation, are a manic-depressive neighbor,
a meddling chicken-frying roommate, and
a “mysterious” woman all prodding
Dorothea into a decision that reshapes
her life.
Clive Barnes noted that in this jewel
of a play, Williams maintains a tension
in which “pathos is brightly linked
with comedy.”
To
learn more about this wonderful play, click to read the program notes by Mark Cleveland.
FUSION Theatre Company welcomes back
Fred Franklin as director. In past seasons,
Mr. Franklin directed
FUSION’s highly successful productions
of Williams’ A Streetcar
Named Desire, The Glass
Menagerie, and Suddenly
Last Summer. Leading a spectacular
cast comprised of FUSION's
leading "Williams' women," you
won't want to miss this beautiful, brilliant
evening of hilarity
by an American master.
A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur continues
through February 14th with Thursday and
Friday performances
at 8:00 p.m., two performances on Saturdays
at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 6:00
p.m. For tickets and information call 766-9412
or click here:
Single tickets are $30 for
general admission, $25 for students and
seniors. Thursday performances (excluding
opening night) feature a $10.00 student
rush (with valid I.D.) and $20 actor rush
(with professional resume.) The first Saturday,
January 30, is a pay-what-you-wish performance.
Group discounts are also available. Substantial
discounts are available when you purchase
a
Free parking is plentiful
in our lot just north of the theatre. The
Cell is located at 700 1st St. N.W., just
west of Broadway and south of Lomas.
Saturday, February 13 is BikeABQ day at the theatre!
Free Refreshments for any bicyclist!
Portion of proceeds goes to BikeABQ,
Albuquerque's premier bicycle advocacy organization!
Park your bikes in our safe, secure, supervised
location! Don't miss this wonderful, special event!
Wally Gordon, review, The
Independent, 2/3/10:
"FUSION Theater, the Albuquerque area’s only
professional acting company, is devoting the 2009-10
season to comedy, but its current offering, an
obscure play by Tennessee Williams, is a very funny
kind of comedy, and I don’t mean funny ha-ha.
The third play in the season that FUSION has
dubbed The Audacity of Laughter, “A Lovely
Sunday for Creve Coeur” has four characters,
all women, all finding life a lot to cope with,
all playing roles that combine illusion with sorrow,
but each, despite everything, somehow getting
on with the compromised task of living. If this
be comedy, who needs tragedy?
The title tells you all you really need to know
about the play. A translation from the French would
be, “A Lovely Sunday for a Broken Heart.” Hearts
do break and it is still a lovely Sunday for a
picnic in the local park named Creve Coeur.
The play contains two strong, fascinating characters,
witty dialogue, a good bit of mordant humor and,
typically of Williams, powerful passions f lowing
beneath a surface of false gentility. But it lacks
something essential, what Chekhov had in mind when
he wrote,“ If there is a gun on the wall
in the first act, it has to go off by the end of
the third act.”
The opening minutes of the play put on the wall
the figurative gun of tragedy and despair. It stays
on the wall until the concluding minutes of the
last act. Then, sud- denly and unexpectedly, it
disappears as if the playwright had never hung
it there in the first place.
It is as if Williams discovered at almost the
end of the play that he was sick and tired of the
despair he had inflicted on his characters in ‘Streetcar
Named Desire, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Glass
Menagerie,” and in the declining, despondent
and drunken culmination of his life tried to write
at least one play with a happy ending.
The ending, however, is so abrupt and so much
a non sequitur that if the director had wanted
to introduce even a hint of irony, a shrug, a frown,
anything but bubbling happiness, “Creve Coeur” would
have really been about broken hearts.
Instead, it is about resignation.I don’t
want to spoil the story for theatergoers who read
this review, but the principal character (Dottie,
admirably played by Jacqueline Reid) is the opposite
of what we might call a modern woman. Like many
women (and men) in all eras, she has dreams that
are transparently unrealistic, but when the dreams
crash, as we know they must, what is there to replace
them? This is the conundrum Williams faced, and
in his inability to give an honest answer lies
the play’s failure.This failure is in spite
of, not because of, the FUSION’s production.
Both Reid and Laurie Thomas as Bodie, an older
woman who is a foil for Dottie, are terrific actresses,
and the other two women, to whom Williams gives
only the shadow of real life, are competently played
by Kate Costello and Jen Grigg. The rather lush,
busy set is attractive and engaging and the direction
by Fred Franklin, an old hand at Williams’ plays,
seems faithful to the playwright’s intent.
No play by Williams is a waste of time, and certainly
this one isn’t either, but the story rings
false and shallow to a contemporary audience."
Barry Gaines, review, Albuquerque
Journal, 2/4/10:
"At The Cell Theatre, the FUSION Theatre Company is making its annual pilgrimage
to the shrine of Tennessee Williams.
Director Fred Franklin and the "Williams women" are
staging the seldom-seen A Lovely Sunday
for Creve Coeur, an expanded one-act play written in the
1970s.Creve Coeur has passages of lilting lyricism reminiscent of Williams'
earlier work, but it also has sections of dark, grotesque humor.
Franklin adds moving music to poignant
moments and enthusiastically employs slapstick.
While I enjoyed the show, I am not sure that Franklin's
focus on
the comedy best
serves the play.
The drama features four women and
a three-room apartment in an unfashionable section
of St. Louis. Dorothea is a civics teacher who
believes she has found
the romance of her life with her high school principal, the socially elite
Ralph Ellis. After letting him seduce her, she is waiting for his call
and "important
news." Her roommate Bodey, an older German-American, wants Dorothea
to marry her overweight, beer-swilling, cigar-smoking twin brother, Buddy.
Bodey is preparing for a picnic
at Creve Coeur ("broken heart"), where
Buddy will propose. Unexpectedly, Dorothea's teaching colleague Helena
visits. Elegantly dressed, Helena is socially pretentious
and domineering. She wants
to take Dorothea from her tasteless apartment to share a fashionable
duplex, and she needs Dorothea's share of the rent.
Into this mix comes a strange character;
Sophie Gluck is a manic-depressive whose mother's death has unsettled
her. She speaks almost entirely in German, has
an explosive attack of diarrhea, and throws
a glass of water in Helena's face.
Richard K. Hogle has built an admirably
detailed realistic apartment: bedroom and adjoining
bathroom,
living room and kitchen all furnished
in early
tasteless. The costumes, designed by Aura Sperling-Pierce, range from
Bodey's shapeless
housedress and apron to Helena's gorgeous white Art Deco frock. There
are actual St. Louis references in the script, yet Williams wrote that
the
play "is
not realism."
Jacqueline Reid is appealing as
the narcissistic Dorothea, who goes from dewy-
to open-eyed. I loved Reid's monologue when Dorothea,
juiced up
on barbiturates
and alcohol, recalls the sexual inadequacy of her artistically sensitive
boyfriend. Laurie Thomas plays Bodey with rugged determinism, and Jen
Grigg's Sophie is
hunched and haunted, barely human. Yet she voices (in German) the fear — shared
by all the characters — of being "Allein! In der Welt, freundlos!" or "Alone!
In the world, friendless!" As Helena, Kate Costello remains a
calm center around which the whirlwind revolves. Her eyes remain steely
and
her smile fixed
in chilling hauteur.
Williams called Creve Coeur a "bijou," a
delicate jewel. But has it become costume jewelry?"
Alvin Klein, review, New
York Times:
"Blanche lives. In the guise of the neurasthenic Dorothea, she teaches civics,
swigs
sherry and pops Mebaral tablets. Desperately awaiting ''an important telephone
call''
from a beau who is otherwise engaged, Dorothea hangs on to the illusion of marriage
to the school principal Ralph Ellis, a gentle man of charm and breeding, a man
she desires. Has any playwright taken possession of the word desire with such
sensual and poetic resonance?
One life-changing rainy night, on a deserted hill -- Art Hill -- Dorothea and
Ralph made love in his new sedan, ''The Flying Cloud.'' Dorothea had ''always
drawn a strict line with a man till this occasion.'' And this occasion promised
an ''affair of the heart.'' But there is no telephone call.
And she gets over it; no mad scene for Dorothea in A
Lovely
Sunday for Creve Coeur, a poignant comedy of affirmation, which Tennessee Williams
wrote some 30 years after A Streetcar Named Desire.
Neil Munro, Canadian director:
“Williams' characters live their lives as if they are holding their breath
. . in a kind of desperate defense against this sense of overwhelming, existential
loneliness."
"A
Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur" Cast
Jen Grigg
JEN
GRIGG* most recently played
in and directed several of FUSION's short
works in The Seven: That One
Thing, including
directing the Samuel French OOB Festival
award-winning The Education of
Macoloco.
Previously at FUSION, she was "Catherine" in
David Mamet's Boston Marriage and "Mairead" in
FUSION's hair-raising production of Martin
McDonough's The Lieutenant of
Inishmore. She also has appeared
as “The Giant” in FUSION's
touring children's musical Seven
at a Swat. Other productions
with FUSION: “Rebecca,” The
Long Christmas Ride Home; “Girl,” Mr.
Paradise, and various roles
in FUSION's The Seven: New Works,
for which she also serves as curator.
Actors Theatre of Louisville: “Aramanda,” The
Second Death of Priscilla (27th
Annual Humana Festival). Other Theatre: "Willie," The
Twilight Zones; "Lord Salisbury," King
John. Ms. Grigg teaches and
is a licensed Natural Therapeutics Specialist.
Her BFA is from Cornish College of the
Arts.
Jacqueline Reid
JACQUELINE
REID*
is a founding member of
FUSION. Most recently at FUSION, she was
"Theresa" in Alan Ayckbourne's How
the Other Half Loves. Last season
she was "Ruth" in
Pinter's The Homecoming and "Joy" in
Jez Butterworth's Parlour Song.
She directed FUSION’s world premiere
of Mad Hattr, as well
as last season's Death of a Salesman.
She appeared and directed in several works
in last season's The Seven: New
Works. She played “Beth” in
Craig Wright’s Orange Flower
Water, “Vera” in The
Fat Man's Wife, “Catherine” in Suddenly
Last Summer, “Amanda” in Private
Lives, the title role in Hedda
Gabler, “Laura” in The
Glass Menagerie, “Stella” in A
Streetcar Named Desire, “Dancer” in The
Eight: Reindeer Monologues, “Kate” in The
Taming of the Shrew, “Zelda
Fitzgerald” in Bye, Bye Blackbird, “Anna” in Closer, “Elizabeth” in The
Art of Dining, and “Maggie” in Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof. Regional lead
roles include Romeo & Juliet, Agnes
of God, and Crimes of
the Heart. Recent film roles include
the lead in Heat Lightning,
a film noir short, and Doc West as
well as recent television credits including
the series In
Plain Sight, Unsolved
Mysteries and True Confessions,
in which she starred with Adam Arkin. She
is a BFA graduate of The North Carolina
School of the Arts.
Laurie Thomas
LAURIE
THOMAS*
is a director, actor,
writer, and educator. She’s portrayed
a multitude of roles as varied as Lizzie
Borden and Henry V at theatres including
California Shakespeare Theatre, Book-It
Repertory Theatre, On the Boards, A Contemporary
Theatre and Southwest Repertory Theatre.
She is a member of the Performing Arts
faculty at Albuquerque Academy. She is
a co-founder and Artistic Associate of
FUSION Theatre Company. She garnered high
praise this summer in the principal role
of Jen Silverman’s The Education
of Macoloco while helping win
Samuel French's Off Broadway New Plays
Festival. FUSION audiences saw her this
season in Alan Ayckbourne's How
the Other Half Loves. Last season,
she was "Linda" in Death
of a Salesman. Other notable performances
have included "Violet Venable," "Amanda," and "Blanche" in
their respective plays in FUSION's productions
of Tennessee Williams' works. She directed
Sarah Ruhl's eurydice and
Pinter's The Homecoming last
season.
Kate Costello
KATE
COSTELLO^ performs regularly
with FUSION, having played "The
Waitress/Flower Seller" in this
season's First
Love by
Charles Mee. Previously, she was "Little
Stone" in
last season's Sarah Ruhl's euydice as
well as performing in The Seven:
That One Thing and our touring
production of Brad Gromelski's The
Invention. She appeared in the
first The Seven: Games People
Play with FUSION, as well as
numerous other productions nationally.
Kate received her BA from UNM and her
MFA from SMU in Dallas.
* member
Actors Equity Association, the union
of professional actors and stage managers
in the United States
^ Equity Membership Candidate
