E-Verse Radio

American Premiere of The Lifeblood, New Verse Drama by Glyn Maxwell

by Ernie on 24/01/08 at 10:53 am

AMERICAN PREMIERE OF THE LIFEBLOOD BY GLYN MAXWELL, FEBRUARY 1, 2008 AT PHOENIX THEATRE ENSEMBLE

Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, a New York artist-directed theatre company, announces that the American premiere of Glyn Maxwell’s remarkable drama The Lifeblood. The dramatic telling of the last days of Mary Stuart begins performances on Friday, February 1 and plays through Saturday, February 23 at The Connelly Theatre, 220 East 4th Street, in New York. The Lifeblood first premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2004, where it was hailed as the British Theatre Guide’s “Best Play on the Fringe.” Produced in London in 2005, it tells the story of Mary Stuart’s last days. London’s The Stage said, “Glyn Maxwell’s script somehow manages to suggest the rhythm and structure of Shakespearean language while keeping it in a modern context. It feels like the history play Shakespeare never wrote.” The Lifeblood, centers around the last days of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. A devout Catholic Mary was imprisoned for nearly two decades by her cousin Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth eventually signs the execution decree and she was eventually executed. Craig Smith, one of the Phoenix Ensemble Directors, states “This is an exquisitely written play. The government intrigues and plots leading to Mary’s persecution both political and religious, make Mr. Maxwell’s play extremely relevant and the ending has a remarkable and sobering twist. The Phoenix is proud to bring this beautiful play to American audiences.”

Glyn Maxwell is a poet and playwright from Hertfordshire, England. This will be a very busy year for Maxwell. Along with The Lifeblood in New York, “The Only Girl in the World” will open at the Arcola Studio in London, in April 2008, “Mimi and the Stalker” will open in London this spring and later this summer “Liberty” will have its world premiere at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, prior to a UK tour. He is also developing a version of Hecabe/Women of Troy, called The Ruins for Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). His novel The Girl Who Was Going To Die is to be published in March 2008 by Jonathan Cape. His last poetry book was The Sugar Mile (Houghton Mifflin, 2005) and hew new book of poetry Hide Now will publish in the fall of 2008 (Houghton Mifflin). He graduated from Oxford and studied poetry under Derek Walcott at Boston University. He has published several books of verse, including The Breakage (1998) Time’s Fool (2000), and The Nerve (2002), all of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. In 1997 he was awarded the E.M.Forster Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2004 the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, for The Nerve. Several of his plays have been performed in Britain, including highly praised productions of Broken Journey (a Time Out Critics’ Choice in 1999; Phoenix Theatre Ensemble in New York 2005), Wolfpit (Phoenix New York 2006) and Anyroad. His libretto for Elena Langer’s The Girl of Sand premiered at the Almeida in London in 2003, and his libretto for Edward Dudley Hughes’s version of Aristophanes’ Birds will premiere in June 2005. He has taught at Princeton, Columbia, Amherst, and the New School, and is currently the Poetry Editor of The New Republic and teaches at New York University. The Lifeblood under the direction of Robert Hupp, features a 8-member cast headed by Elise Stone as Mary. Others in the cast include Brian Costello, Jolie Garrett, Douglas McKeown, Joe Menino, Jason O’Connell, Craig Smith, and Mark Waterman. Tickets for The Lifeblood are $20 each (TDF Vouchers accepted) and can be obtained by calling 212-352-3101 or by visiting www.PhoenixTheatreEnsemble.org