MTC Eyes Moonlight for 2004-2005 Season
In Moonlight and Magnolias, the year is 1939 and David O. Selznick is making the mother of all movies, Gone with the Wind. The cast is in place and cameras are rolling. There's just one problem--Selznick doesn't have a script yet. So he locks himself, director Victor Fleming and script doctor Ben Hecht in a room with little more than peanuts, bananas and a typewriter, and they proceed to re-enact the saga of Scarlett and Rhett.
The play ran at the Goodman's Owen Theatre from May 15 through June 13. In his review of the piece, Variety's Chris Jones wrote: "Once an Irish playwright with a taste for intense political drama such as Rat in the Skull, Ron Hutchinson now is one of Hollywood's busier rewrite guys. His affectionate and very funny new farce about the closed-door travails behind the frantic penning of the screenplay to Gone With the Wind has one big, bankable asset: an unmistakable sense of authenticity. The main problem with this three-handed show--at its first Goodman Theater outing, at least--is that it cannot quite decide whether to be a rollicking Hollywood farce built around the clash of titanic egos, or a sweet, affectionate tribute to indie-minded movie impresarios… As if those conflicting aims were not enough, Hutchinson also introduces a major serious theme late in the day--when Ben Hecht convinces Selznick that all the money and power in the world won't buy a Jewish guy respect in the America of 1939. That's a lot for a single-set play like this to hold, and at times Steven Robman's premiere production loses its stylistic balance. But those inconsistencies could be easily fixed."
While Steve Robman staged the play in Chicago with a cast composed of Ron Orbach, William Dick, Rob Riley and Mary Seibel, MTC Artistic Director Lynne Meadow is expected to helm the New York mounting.
It is currently unclear when the production will take place. MTC has announced a complete season, and its fall plays have casts attached making them less likely to be canceled. The second half of their season features Charles Busch's Our Leading Lady, which was announced to run on Stage I from February 17 through April 24, and Jeffrey Hatcher's A Picasso, which is scheduled for Stage II from March 31 through May 29. Since it is unlikely that Meadow will helm more than one play in the spring, one may speculate that Busch's Lady which Meadow is set to direct may be delayed to accommodate Moonlight and Magnolias.
An MTC spokesperson could not confirm the company was producing Moonlight and Magnolias.