Thursday, September 25, 2008

Fight club

Off Broadway can be hazadous to your health, as a dirty rotten scoundrel takes on a top girl in what appears from this press release to be an onstage death match:

"MCC Theater today announced that, due to injuries sustained this week by the two stars, a preview performance of Tony Award-winner Michael Weller’s new play Fifty Words, was cancelled (Wednesday night) and the opening night has been moved. The opening night, originally scheduled for Sunday evening at 6:30 p.m., has been rescheduled to Wednesday (10/1) at 7 p.m.

The two character play which includes a fair amount of physical action, co-stars Norbert Leo Butz and Elizabeth Marvel, and is directed by Austin Pendleton. Fifty Words began performances at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street, NYC) on September 10 and continues through October 25.

In a joint statement, Messrs. Robert LuPone and Bernard Telsey (the artistic directors) said, “In order to give our cast time to heal properly, and to give the critics an opportunity to reschedule their tickets and file their reviews, we felt it best to cancel two press performances and delay the opening night.”

In Fifty Words, something’s gone awry behind the idyllic façade of Jan and Adam’s Brooklyn brownstone. At 9:10 p.m., they’re reveling in the freedom of having waved off their young son, Greg, to a neighborhood sleepover. By 9:30 p.m., things have gone, well…way past awry. Alternately funny and frightening, Fifty Words is an expansive look at modern marriage, as seen through the looking glass of one couple’s long night’s journey into day."

By 9:50 p.m., who will survive, and what will be left of Jan and Adam...

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