Press Release - The Magnificent Ambersons

The following went out in the last few days to the press list, we'll see if it does anything. There is already a call for production photos, which are a pain to deal with without having the proper period costumes as yet. I've worked it out and we'll take the shots on Monday. I was worried briefly about having the time to pull this show together, but after the last two rehearsals, I'm not worried anymore.

*****

For Immediate Release, please list under Off-Off Broadway
Critics are invited to all performances
June 1, 6, 10, 12 at 8:00 pm
Contact: Karen Greco
Karen Greco Entertainment, karen@XXXXXXXX.com
XXX-XXX-XXXX (phone), XXX-XXX-XXXX (fax)


The Brick Theater, Inc.
presents
a Gemini CollisionWorks production

The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles:
A Reconstruction for the Stage

as part of The Film Festival: A Theater Festival

In 1942, Orson Welles completed his second feature film, the follow-up to his masterpiece Citizen Kane, which had been critically lauded but a financial disaster for the studio, RKO Radio Pictures. The Magnificent Ambersons was a 131-minute epic retelling of Booth Tarkington’s classic novel of the destruction of a rich and powerful family by the Industrial Revolution, and Welles thought it an even better film than Kane. Welles then immediately had to leave the country on an assignment to make a documentary at the request of the US Government as part of the war effort. His film was left in the hands of Welles’ collaborators and the studio, who previewed the film – with disastrous results – and decided it needed to be “fixed” before a general release.

With Welles attempting to curtail or at least work with them in their efforts by telegram, phone, and letter (he had lost final cut on the film in a contract renegotiation after the failure of Kane), RKO cut 45 minutes from Welles’ version and reshot several scenes to give the film a less dark and moody tone. Eventually, an 88-minute version was dumped in theatres as the second feature behind Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost. All the remaining footage that had been cut, and all prints of the longer version of the film, were destroyed by the studio. Welles’ career never really recovered from the blow.

This production is a live theatrical reconstruction of Welles’ original cut of the film, as much as can be reconstructed from the transcripts, photos, and documents that we have. In this version, the story of the Amberson family is expanded back into the epic tragedy Welles intended, with a cast of 20 recreating Welles’ cinematic brilliance in the language of live theatre. Also using Bernard Herrmann’s entire great original score (Herrmann took his name off the final film after his score was partially replaced), this reconstruction tells the entire story, not just the star-crossed love story that RKO wanted it to be, of the failure of the land-owning Ambersons and the rise of their friend Eugene Morgan, an inventor of the very automobile that makes the Amberson land worthless, set from the 1880s to 1910s, in a small, midwestern town as it spreads and darkens into a large industrial city.

It isn’t the Welles film, certainly, but it may be as close a version of it as you’ll ever see.

Ian W. Hill, adaptor, designer, director and narrator of this project, has created 55 stage productions since 1997 with his company Gemini CollisionWorks, including works by Richard Foreman, T.S. Eliot, Clive Barker, Mac Wellman, Ronald Tavel, Jeff Goode, Mark Spitz, and Edward D. Wood, Jr., as well as the original plays World Gone Wrong; Kiss Me, Succubus; At the Mountains of Slumberland; and Even the Jungle (slight return). As a designer (light, sound, projections, sets) and technical/artistic consultant he has worked with many other stage artists and theatres for almost 20 years, and he is currently technical director of The Brick.

The cast of this play includes David Arthur Bachrach*, Aaron Baker, Linda Blackstock, Walter Brandes*, Rebecca Collins*, Ivanna Cullinan*, Sarah Malinda Engelke*, Larry Floyd*, Stephen Heskett*, Justin R.G. Holcomb*, Amy Lizska*, Roger Nasser, Vince Phillip*, Maire-Rose Pike*, Shelley Ray*, Timothy McCown Reynolds*, Bill Weeden*, Natalie Wilder*, and Scot Lee Williams

at
The Brick
575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211
½ a block from the Lorimer stop of the L train - www.bricktheater.com
June 1, 6, 10, 12, 2008 at 8:00 pm
approximately 2 hours long
All tickets $15.00
Tickets available at the door or through theatermania.com (212-352-3101 or toll-free: 1-866-811-4111)

* Appears Courtesy of Actors Equity Association

Wall of Sound / Wall of Chicken Fat

Two more obits to pass on, and if you don't know much about these gentlemen, follow the links, and follow their work, where you can find it.

Larry Levine, regular engineer for Phil Spector and Eddie Cochran, occasional engineer for Brian Wilson and Herb Alpert, died at the age of 80. Idolator passed me through to a good obit at All About Jazz and a nice interview with Levine at CNN from 5 years ago. Levine was one of those engineers who took their job to a level beyond being just a technician, working hard to make the improbable and difficult-to-capture-on-vinyl sounds that their genius bosses were demanding (Geoff Emerick's recent memoir about his career, primarily with The Beatles from Revolver onward, does a good job of explaining just what someone like Levine or Emerick does, and why they are so crucial to good records).

Also now gone, the great Will Elder, 86, one of the original artists on the Mad comic book, and probably the best interpreter of Harvey Kurtzman's vision for that book (and other, later work, though I'd rather like to forget Little Annie Fanny). The master of what came to be known as the "chicken-fat" school of cartooning (beloved first by the French nouvelle vague filmmakers, some of whom deliberately copied Elder's cramming of offhanded details and jokes throughout the frame in their films), a good obit is here in The Comics Reporter, and he is remembered by writer/comic book historian Mark Evanier HERE, and in two blogs with appropriate names, Edwin Hunter's Chicken Fat and Bhob Stewart's POTRZEBIE (Bhob also reproduces a classic Elder splash panel - for "Restaurant!" - in large form HERE).

Some of my favorite Elder work for Mad can be found online thanks to Gatochy's Blog, including "The Hound of the Basketballs" and "Dragged Net." I wish I could find "Starchie," or "Ping Pong!" or "Mickey Rodent!" or "Howdy Dooit!" somewhere on line to pass on to you, but here's all of "Restaurant!" as well, and you can see a nice collection of Elder pages at The Electronic Almanac of Dr. Derek Wisdom, Metaphysician.

RIP. HOO-HAH!