Book and Lyrics by Scott Miller & W.S. Gilbert
Music by Arthur Sullivan & John Gerdes
New Line Theatre presented a public reading,
Jan. 6, 2020 at the Marcelle Theater, St. Louis
http://www.newlinetheatre.com/oedipus-reading.html
SYNOPSIS
King Oedipus is already having a bad day, and here comes some REALLY bad news! All Oedipus wants is to lift the curse that's made his city sick, broke, and pissed off, but all these prophecies keep getting in the way. Could it be true that Oedipus killed the last king without realizing it? Is it possible he's married to his own mother? Does his name really mean "swollen foot"? Maybe Tiresias the Blind Seer knows the answers. But does Oedipus really want to know...?
After shocking the music and theatre worlds by rediscovering Gilbert & Sullivan’s lost masterpiece The Zombies of Penzance in 2013, and then staging and publishing the controversial original opera, in 2018, now New Line Theatre artistic director Scott Miller has done it once again. This time, Miller has unearthed Gilbert & Sullivan’s even darker and funnier BLOODY KING OEDIPUS! (or PARDON ME, MUM!), an adult horror-comedy that no one even knew existed until now, based on Sophocles’ iconic Greek tragedy of murder, incest, disfigurement, and suicide, which first debuted in 429 BC.
The legendary British team of librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan together wrote fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896. Or is it sixteen? After rewriting their original Zombies of Penzance at the insistence of producer Richard D’Oyly Carte, the team premiered The Pirates of Penzance in 1879. Until now, scholars believed that their next project was the pastoral satire Patience in 1881. But we now know that isn’t true. After the huge success of HMS Pinafore and Pirates, the team decided to tackle something a bit weightier. According to personal papers found with the manuscript, it was Gilbert who suggested three unlikely possibilities, Dante’s Inferno, the Book of Revelation, and Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. The partners both agreed that Inferno and Armageddon would both pose substantial logistical challenges in staging, so they agreed to tackle Oedipus the King, set in Thebes, a Greek city-state in the 13th century BC.
THE CAST for the 2020 READING
King Oedipus – Dominic Dowdy-Windsor
Queen Jocasta – Kimi Short
Genreal Creon – Kent Coffel
Tiresias the Seer, et al. – Zachary Allen Farmer
Apollo – Ian McCreary
Women of Thebes and Counsellors – Mara Bollini, Robert Doyle, Melissa Felps,
Evan Fornachon, Stephen Henley, Brittany Hester,
Ann Hier, Matt Hill, Melanie Kozak,
Ian McCreary, Chris Moore, and Sarah Porter
http://www.newlinetheatre.com/oedipus-reading.html
SYNOPSIS
King Oedipus is already having a bad day, and here comes some REALLY bad news! All Oedipus wants is to lift the curse that's made his city sick, broke, and pissed off, but all these prophecies keep getting in the way. Could it be true that Oedipus killed the last king without realizing it? Is it possible he's married to his own mother? Does his name really mean "swollen foot"? Maybe Tiresias the Blind Seer knows the answers. But does Oedipus really want to know...?
After shocking the music and theatre worlds by rediscovering Gilbert & Sullivan’s lost masterpiece The Zombies of Penzance in 2013, and then staging and publishing the controversial original opera, in 2018, now New Line Theatre artistic director Scott Miller has done it once again. This time, Miller has unearthed Gilbert & Sullivan’s even darker and funnier BLOODY KING OEDIPUS! (or PARDON ME, MUM!), an adult horror-comedy that no one even knew existed until now, based on Sophocles’ iconic Greek tragedy of murder, incest, disfigurement, and suicide, which first debuted in 429 BC.
The legendary British team of librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan together wrote fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896. Or is it sixteen? After rewriting their original Zombies of Penzance at the insistence of producer Richard D’Oyly Carte, the team premiered The Pirates of Penzance in 1879. Until now, scholars believed that their next project was the pastoral satire Patience in 1881. But we now know that isn’t true. After the huge success of HMS Pinafore and Pirates, the team decided to tackle something a bit weightier. According to personal papers found with the manuscript, it was Gilbert who suggested three unlikely possibilities, Dante’s Inferno, the Book of Revelation, and Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. The partners both agreed that Inferno and Armageddon would both pose substantial logistical challenges in staging, so they agreed to tackle Oedipus the King, set in Thebes, a Greek city-state in the 13th century BC.
THE CAST for the 2020 READING
King Oedipus – Dominic Dowdy-Windsor
Queen Jocasta – Kimi Short
Genreal Creon – Kent Coffel
Tiresias the Seer, et al. – Zachary Allen Farmer
Apollo – Ian McCreary
Women of Thebes and Counsellors – Mara Bollini, Robert Doyle, Melissa Felps,
Evan Fornachon, Stephen Henley, Brittany Hester,
Ann Hier, Matt Hill, Melanie Kozak,
Ian McCreary, Chris Moore, and Sarah Porter
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