Spinella & Turturro Set for New Audience Shows
The season will begin with Spinella playing the title character in Svejk, Colin Teevan's adaptation of Jaroslav Hasek's 1923 satiric novel, The Good Soldier Svejk. The story centers on Svejk, a manipulative and sloppy Czech soldier. Dalia Ibelhauptaite will direct the play, which begins performances at The Duke on 42nd Street on November 6 in preparation for a November 14 opening.
The company will then present Karin Coonrod's staging of Shakespeare's tragedy Coriolanus. Set in Rome during a war, Coriolanus is not a tragedy of an individual, but rather a tragedy of Coriolanus and the people, of patricians vs. plebians, rich vs. poor and of explosive class warfare. The production will begin previews on February 5 at the new 37 Arts Theatre at 450 West 37th Street.
Theatre for a New Audience's spring production will feature Turturro in the New York premiere of Eduardo De Filippo's Souls of Naples Questi Fantasmi! is the original Italian title. The play centers on Pasquale Turturro, a man whose desperate drive to succeed can blind him to anything, even another man's passion for his wife. When he moves into a supposedly haunted house, the cheap rent and vast number of rooms make it easy for him to delude himself into thinking her visiting lover is only a ghost. Using a new translation specially commissioned by Theatre for a New Audience from critic/translator Michael Feingold, the production will be staged by Roman Paska, who collaborated with Turturro on the film Illuminata. Souls of Naples begins previews at The Duke on 42nd Street on April 2 in preparation for an April 10 opening.