March 2007

Dear Subscriber:

SPRING IS VIRTUALLY in the air. We’ve switched our clocks ahead already and baseball season will be starting very soon.  Celebrating our 40th Anniversary season with you has been very special. The stories that you shared with us about The Rep and your lives were quite moving and remind all of us of how connected this arts institution is with our community. I think that both the long-term subscribers and new subscribers had a lot to enjoy this year, from the magic and thrill of ACE through the rest of the season. We are very excited about what we have for you next season, and that information will be coming to you very shortly.

FOR OUR FINAL MAINSTAGE production this season, we shift focus from the isolation that sometimes accompanies the cultivation of great ideals as we saw in The Heidi Chronicles to the isolation that often follows (or perhaps enables) the cultivation of great intellect in Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure. This clever new work by Steven Dietz is nominated for The Mystery Writers of America 2007 Edgar Award and is skillfully crafted to pass for a vintage Holmes tale. Based on the 1899 play by the great detective’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and American actor and dramatist, William Gillette, whose characterization of the famous super sleuth, complete with Deerstalker cap and calabash pipe, is the one that most of us recognize today, the plot loosely follows those of two original Conan Doyle short stories, “A Scandal in Bohemia” and “The Final Problem.” In Dietz’s authentic adaptation, as in most of Conan Doyle’s writings, the action is narrated by Holmes’ loyal companion, Dr. John Watson. He ushers us through the streets of London and across continental Europe in pursuit of the only two people to ever truly challenge or delight Holmes, Professor Moriarty, the mastermind’s archrival, and Irene Adler, a strikingly talented and beautiful opera diva whom Holmes refers to singularly as, “The Woman.”

YOU ARE CERTAIN TO ENJOY the game, the hunt, the criminals, the sense of the action of stories brought to the stage as you watch the most famous of detectives practice his trade, particularly as he does battle with the two most powerful forces he has ever encountered—a mind as sharp as his own and a love that even his carefully plied logic can’t explain. Because Holmes is stunningly brilliant and amazingly astute in his observations of human behavior, it is easy to mark him as an inaccessible genius, perhaps even superhuman. But as the short stories reveal and this new adaptation boldly underscores, his humanity is not absented by, but rather intrinsic to his genius. He is one of us. As playwright Steven Dietz said of his leading man in a recent interview:  “[H]is mental acuity may be superhuman, but the man himself is fatally human, terribly flawed—beautifully flawed from the dramatist’s point of view...whether it’s his paranoia or drug use or failed relationships or being a loner—that’s all golden to the dramatist.  It’s the opposite of a superhero.”

EVEN AS WE, along with Watson (The Everyman in Holmes’ world), revel in the glow cast by this high-wattage mind, we take a measure of comfort in knowing that he too can be undone by love, tempted by vices and even occasionally made to doubt himself. As Watson guides us through Holmes’ larger than life adventures, he gives further credence to our lesser intellects and helps us bridge the gap. Simply put, Holmes is as reliant on the overt humanity of Watson as Watson is on the unmistakable genius of Holmes. Theirs is a truly symbiotic relationship, and it is their combined powers of emotional intuition and cold deduction that produce a superhero, not either in isolation. It is great fun to watch this pair in action as Holmes practices the Socratic method on Watson, honing his own skills even as he coaches the doctor through his erroneous answers or inadvertent omissions of key facts. The joy in this mystery lies not in the solving of any heinous crime, but rather in seeing two minds working as one.

EDWARD STERN RETURNS to us to direct this co-production with Actors Theatre of Louisville and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, with an evocative and fascinating scenic design by Neil Patel. Liz Covey’s costume design is most intriguing—notice how almost everything in the first act is black and white with some shades of color being introduced in Act Two. Robert Wierzel provides the atmospheric lighting. Joris Stuyck’s Holmes is joined by Howard Kaye as
Dr. Watson, Michael Haworth as Professor Moriarty and Brandy Burre as Irene Adler. Completing the case are David Huber, William McNulty, Carine Montbertrand, Michael Sharon as the King of Bohemia, and Webster Conservatory students Liz Ali, J.J. Perez, Ian Way and Brian White. You are sure to delight in seeing this tale unfold through the masterful storytelling of Dr. Watson, as he relates with admiration and trepidation his friend and colleague’s unlikely intersecting quests for love and intellectual triumph. Let me simply offer one caveat in watching the play, in the words of Holmes: “...never guess. It is a capital mistake.”

YOU ALSO WILL not want to miss our Studio production of Lanie Robertson’s critically acclaimed Woman Before a Glass: A Triptych in Four Parts. Running downstairs March 14th through April 1st, this one-woman show starring Glynis Bell frames the unparalleled life of Peggy Guggenheim, the founder of one of Paris’s best-known art galleries and patron of some of the 20th-century art scene’s greatest names. Her passion and verve led her through a series of relationships with many artistic elites and ultimately produced one of the finest private collections in the world. Steve Campo directs this funny and touching portrait of a woman who made names as well as she dropped them. Ms. Guggenheim lived her life to the fullest—with lots of men and lots of passionate strong language. She was in current terms “a real piece of work.”

OUR FINAL OFFERINGS for the season provide a look inside the hearts and minds of two very different, but truly exceptional individuals, one fictional (a few die-hard Holmesians will argue this point) and one based in reality. Both are fabulous portraits of amazing individuals and their exotic worlds. Enjoy their mystery, passion, elegance and great stories. Have a wonderful spring and summer. We’ll see you soon and then again in September.

See you at the theatre,

Steven Woolf
Artistic Director

BRIEF NEW YORK REPORT:  Spring Awakening has moved to Broadway from Off-Broadway and is still a very fresh and exciting production. It does contain strong material. The cast and entire production is unlike anything you have seen before on Broadway. I also had the pleasure of seeing the first of the Marathon performances of all three plays in Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia in one day. It was thrilling theatre. If you are interested in seeing a work the likes of which comes along so rarely, it is worth trying to see all the plays in one day. The run has been extended at Lincoln Center.