October 2009

Dear Subscriber:

WE ENJOYED A POWERFUL START to our season with the beautiful, gripping and compelling Amadeus. Passion and poison led to high stakes indeed as we watched two men battle over fame, reputation, faith and genius. The audience response at every performance was thrilling, and we were very pleased to receive a rave review in The Wall Street Journal. It was a lovely recognition of the show and our work. We now move on to another battle of wills, this time between two witty gamesmen in Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth. Like his brother Peter Shaffer in our season opener, Anthony Shaffer gives us a dangerous battle between two strong personalities.

CAN YOU IMAGINE the family dinners? The Shaffers had two Tony Award-winning playwrights at the same table, and not just brothers, but twins. It seems competition would surely arise; however, these twins were more likely to work together than wish each other ill. Getting their start at Cambridge, the pair penned several works together under the name “Peter Anthony” including short stories The Woman in the Wardrobe, How Doth the Little Crocodile and Withered Murder, all exploring murder and criminality. After college, both Shaffers went on to pursue writing for the stage, and each found his own successes. Peter, well known for Equus, Amadeus, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, The Private Ear and The Public Eye, made his name with many different works, while Anthony found the bulk of his success in just one ground-breaking play, Sleuth.

AT THE TIME Anthony Shaffer began work on his play, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap had been on stage in London for nearly 20 years. A great fan of Christie, Shaffer later said in an interview that his goal was to both poke fun at his beloved cozy mysteries and at the same time twist the form in his own way. Traditional mysteries, like those of Christie’s, provided a familiar and therefore popular scene for the audience: a murder would occur just before the end of the first act and the second act would be devoted to solving the case and restoring order. Shaffer, however, had different plans for his play. The well-known “whodunit” wasn’t enough; he wanted to trick his audience even further, keeping them on the edge of their seats with a new idea. Instead of the “whodunit,” he created a “whodunwhat.” Not only was the identity of the criminal a question to solve, but the audience also had to figure out exactly what was the crime. Traditional mystery rules were pushed aside, subverting all the audience’s comfortable expectations. But Shaffer didn’t stop there. Coupled with his new kind of plot puzzle was an underlying tease, poking fun at the very mystery genre he used and loved. He filled his pages with comedic wit and deception rather than the staid characters of the cozy. As he wanted, with Sleuth Shaffer certainly twisted his beloved mystery form, and in doing so, he created a whole new genre. In his book Murderous Games, Marvin Carlson calls it “the first fully developed example of a new genre: the comedy-thriller that uses self-conscious parody of the detective genre and dramatic illusion as a means to recreate the genre.”

AT THE CORE of this comedy-thriller is game play. Both characters are playing sinister games with each other, and in turn, Shaffer is playing his own games with the audience. Shaffer claimed part of his inspiration for this was his friend Stephen Sondheim, whose great love of games contributed to the character of famed mystery novelist Andrew Wyke. As a successful writer of detective fiction, Wyke comes to see himself as the consummate gamesman. Believing himself cleverer than most any opponent, Wyke sets out to destroy his enemy, but young Milo Tindle proves to be a player himself and a more than worthy adversary. According to Shaffer, the circumstance is “... nightmarish. The whole idea of people committed to a games situation… If there is a focal point, it’s that if people take fantasy for reality, and act upon it, it must end in disaster.” Indeed, how could it end any other way?

SPEAKING OF ENDINGS, there are many people who have never seen the play or the movie, so please don’t give away how the play works. Future audiences will surely thank you, as will our cast and design team, led this time by director Michael Evan Haney. No stranger to The Rep, Mr. Haney gives us another mystery after directing Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution; he has also joined us for The Heidi Chronicles, The Syringa Tree and last season’s Studio closer, the hilarious Souvenir. The cast includes Munson Hicks, who directed our production of Candide many years ago, playing Andrew. Michael Gabriel Goodfriend plays Milo, and they are joined by Stanley Rushton, Robin Mayfield and Liam McNulty. Our talented design team includes scenic designer Paul Shortt (Dracula, Of Mice and Men and Mister Roberts, among many others), costume designer Gordon DeVinney and lighting designer James Sale (Of Mice and Men).

WE’LL HAVE JUST as much gamesmanship and intrigue downstairs in the first show of our Studio season, Bob Clyman’s tense medical drama, Secret Order. In our country’s current healthcare climate, it is an ideal time to examine the moral and ethical quandaries on both sides of the medical debate. Living in a city that has long been home to some of the country’s leading medical research facilities, we may have heard about groundbreaking discoveries, research grants and laboratory findings. We may not, however, often consider the real-life men and women behind the science. Clyman does. Secret Order delves deeply into the questions, decisions and consequences not only of research, but those people who are at the heart of it. And the people Clyman puts at the heart of his own scientific struggles are as complex as they come, grappling with the order of science, faith and humanity. It is an exciting way to open the Studio season this year.

WE ARE PLEASED to welcome Risa Brainin as the director of Secret Order. Creating our world of science is scenic and lighting designer Mark Wilson (The Vertical Hour, A Number), costume designer Lou Bird (This Wonderful Life, The Clean House) and Rep resident sound designer Rusty Wandall.

WE CONTINUE OUR SEASON with two shows full of physical, psychological and emotional games and battles. We’re so glad you will be joining us for these entertaining and thought-provoking plays.

See you at the theatre,

Steven Woolf
Artistic Director

P.S. I would like to remind you to think “less is more” when wearing perfume to the theatre. Some people in the audience are quite allergic to certain scents, so in order to make viewing the plays that much better for everyone, we ask that you keep fragrances to a minimum or don’t use them at all. Thank you.

FREE READING: On October 12, The Rep, in partnership with Webster University and cast members of The Phantom of the Opera, will present a free public reading of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later: An Epilogue.
A decade ago, the Tectonic Theater Project visited Laramie, Wyoming to interview residents about the impact of Matthew Shepard’s murder, creating The Laramie Project. This year, the company returned to conduct follow-up interviews and create a coda to that piece.

More than 100 theatres across the country will participate in simultaneous readings of the new play. In St. Louis, please join us at the Community Music School on the campus of Webster University (adjacent to the Loretto-Hilton Center) on Monday, October 12 at 8:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit repstl.org/laramie.