Solas Nua: Theatre
2005 -2006 Theatre Season
Tickets Photos Directions Press
by
Marina Carr.
Directed by Caroline Kenney & Linda Murray
Featuring:
Kerry Waters, Ken Arnold, Rusty Clauss, Karen Novack,
Stephanie Roswell, Clare Johnson, Declan Cashman, Elizabeth Bruce.
'a
triumph . . . deeply affecting, wonderfully
provocative and profoundly rewarding'.
-The Sunday Tribune
2nd
- 26th March, 2006.
Thursday through Saturday at 8pm. Sunday at 7pm.
The
Mai's remaining shows are sold out!
Purchase tickets now for the next Solas Nua
show
Josephine
Butler Parks Center,
2437 15th St., NW, Washington, DC, 20009
http://www.washingtonparks.net
Reviews:
Washington
Post
"The Mai" is a vivid and affecting play..."
"This production's ingenious exploitation of its venue, lush with
"Masterpiece Theatre" vibes, really is something to see."
"Co-directors Linda Murray and Caroline Kenney have staged this
bittersweet memory play -- by contemporary Irish dramatist Marina Carr
-- to rather stunning effect on an upper floor of the Josephine Butler
Parks Center…"
"This production also boasts strong performances and gorgeous lighting."
"Kerry Waters lends intensity and grandeur to The Mai… Upping
the voltage further is Ken Arnold… an effective Karen Novack and
Clare Johnson…Clauss brings out the humor…daughter to Robert
and The Mai, portrayed with sultry poise by Stephanie Roswell…"
DC
Examiner
"Solas Nua continues string of successful Euro ventures."
"Inspired choice of staging"
"Waters gives (a) remarkable performance. The other members of
the ensemble all give first-rate support, especially Roswell and Rusty
Clauss."
The Mai: An accomplished, beautiful forty-year-old woman, The Mai has always sought an exceptional life. Robert, her cellist husband, has always felt stifled by The Mai's ideals of perfection. After seventeen years he leaves her, whereupon she sets about building a dream house in the hope that he will one day return to her. From her fairytale castle, The Mai waits by the window for her dark-haired prince to return. Set in the inspiring surrounds of the West of Ireland, on the banks of the legendary Owl Lake, we enter this world on the day of Robert's return after an absence of four years.
Marina Carr (b. 1964) was raised in County Offaly. She graduated from University College Dublin with a degree in English and Philosophy. Carr has written eight plays to date. She has been Writer-in-Residence at the Abbey Theatre and Trinity College, Dublin, and is a member of Aosdána. She has won many awards for her work including, the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her first collection of plays is published by Faber and Faber.
In the midst of Mai's and Robert's troubled reunion are the idiosyncratic characters that comprise the family. Irreverent and unapologetic, the opium-smoking one-hundred-year-old matriarch, Grandma Fraochlan, presides over all. The "Spanish Beauty," as she is known, with her "ancient and fantastical memory" and mythical presence, reminds us that the past is looming ever present. Her daughters, Agnes and Julie, meddle in the affairs of their three nieces, with comical tenacity. Deeply theatrical and profoundly intense, The Mai is an epic tale of love and loss, of elusive dreams shattered by vulgar but inescapable reality.