Event

THE ILLUSION

"The Illusion" by Tony Kushner, featuring guest performance and visual artist, actor and puppeteer, James Godwin as The Amanuensis
Lester Hartnell as Alcandre
Jarred Stagen as Pridamant
Nicholas Klem as Calisto/Clindor/Theogenes
Amanda Kotch as Melibea/Isabelle/Hippolyta
Skylar Makuch as Elicia/Lyse/Clarina
John Hizny as Pleribo/Adraste/Prince Florilame
A.J. Krier as Matamore
What are the real powers of sorcery? To alter? To define? To transport? In The Illusion, Tony Kushner goes for all three, which is only part of the magic in his fanciful and witty adaptation of Corneille's seventeenth-century comedy, L'illusion Comique. Not content to merely translate the play, Kushner triumphantly exhumed and enlivened the fairytale-fable into a story that proves to be both modern and ancient, timeless and timely, and flippant and profound. The resulting Corneille- Kushner hybrid is a wonderful, postmodern work, which on one level works as a two-act meditation on the power of theatre and the importance of illusion and storytelling. On another, it is the elegantly comedic and genuinely moving story of an old man's search for his long-lost son. The father, facing mortality, desperate to find the son he drove away years before, travels in the dead of night to a mysterious cave. There he engages the services of a wizard, who conjures up visions of the romantic, adventurous, perilous life the son has been living since his father expelled him from home. The Illusion is Kushner's most joyfully theatrical play, a wildly entertaining tale of passion and regret, of love, disillusionment, and magic. "The art of illusion," one of Kushner's characters quips, "is the art of love, and the art of love is the blood-red heart of the world." It is this heart that that takes us into territory on which theatre thrives: fantasy, witchcraft, and transcended time and place.

NOTE: Not recommended for children under 13