Omnium Gatherum (play)

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Omnium Gatherum is a play written in 2003 by Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros. It was one of three finalists for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. [1]

Theresa Rebeck is an American playwright, television writer, and novelist. Her work has appeared on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stage, in film, and on television. Among her awards are the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award. In 2012, she received the Athena Film Festival Award for Excellence as a Playwright and Author of Films, Books, and Television.

Alexandra I. Gersten-Vassilaros is an American playwright and actress. She is the co-author, with Theresa Rebeck, of Omnium Gatherum which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Pulitzer Prize for Drama award

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year. It recognizes a theatrical work staged in the U.S. during the preceding calendar year.

Contents

Productions

Omnium Gatherum premiered in March 2003 at the Humana Festival in Louisville, Kentucky. [2]

Louisville, Kentucky City in Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 29th most-populous city in the United States. It is one of two cities in Kentucky designated as first-class, the other being Lexington, the state's second-largest city. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, located in the northern region of the state, on the border with Indiana.

The play opened Off-Broadway at the Variety Arts Theatre on September 9, 2003 in previews and closed on November 30, 2003. Directed by Will Frears, the cast featured Amir Arison, Jenny Bacon, Phillip Clark (Roger), Melanna Gray (Julia), Edward A. Hajj, Kristine Nielsen (Suzie), Dean Nolen (Terence), and Joseph Lyle Taylor. [3] [4] [5] [6]

An Off-Broadway theatre is any professional venue in Manhattan in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than Off-Off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer than 100.

Kristine E. Nielsen is an American actress known for her work on Broadway and Off-Broadway. Nielsen was nominated for the 2013 Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her performance as Sonia in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.

The play had its West Coast premiere at ACT Theatre in Seattle, Washington in October 2003. [7]

West Coast of the United States Coastline

The West Coast or Pacific Coast is the coastline along which the continental Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. As a region, this term most often refers to the coastal states of California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. More specifically, it refers to an area defined on the east by the Alaska Range, Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, and Mojave Desert, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. The United States Census groups the five states of California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii together as the Pacific States division.

ACT Theatre theater in Seattle, Washington, United States

ACT Theatre is a regional, non-profit theatre organization in Seattle, in the US state of Washington. Gregory A. Falls (1922–1997) founded ACT in 1965 and served as its first Artistic director; at the time ACT was founded he was also head of the Drama Department at the University of Washington. Falls was identified with the theatrical avant garde of the time, and founded ACT because he saw the Seattle Repertory Theatre as too specifically devoted to classics.

Background

"The origins of the play date to the morning of September 11, 2001." Rebeck: "We [Gersten-Vassilaros] were on the phone with each other during the catastrophe, then the phones all went out and we couldn't talk for days... And when we reconnected after 9-11 we both felt right away that we wanted to engage in it as writers." The two finally decided that a dinner party "would be the best vehicle for the play's commentary about the world after Sept. 11." Gersten-Vassilaros: "You have people arguing with each other, but they all must eat food together." [8]

Plot summary

A sophisticated and sometimes surreal dinner party in Manhattan becomes a sounding board for a variety of cultural icons as they pontificate and argue about capitalism, terrorism, popular culture, feminism, food, wealth, heroism, morality, Eastern meditation, Star Trek, and justice. The evening is hosted by Suzie, a former caterer, in her beautiful dining room. She has invited Terence, a British journalist, Roger, an American writer, and Julia, an African-American, among others. The conversation veers from comedy to realism to satire and ends in chaos. Over it all hangs the shadow of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Manhattan Borough in New York City and county in New York, United States

Manhattan, often referred to locally as the City, is the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City and its economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, and historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state of New York. The borough consists mostly of Manhattan Island, bounded by the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers; several small adjacent islands; and Marble Hill, a small neighborhood now on the U.S. mainland, physically connected to the Bronx and separated from the rest of Manhattan by the Harlem River. Manhattan Island is divided into three informally bounded components, each aligned with the borough's long axis: Lower, Midtown, and Upper Manhattan.

Critical response

Ben Brantley in his review in The New York Times wrote: "It is indeed a comédie à clef of sorts, with characters inspired by Martha Stewart, the journalist Christopher Hitchens, the novelist Tom Clancy and Edward Said... What makes the play sing and sting is its radical yet perfectly organic shifts in tone. Tragedy and triviality, ponderousness and pettiness are mixed into a salad so deliriously tossed that you can't separate the individual ingredients." [9]

Charles Isherwood, reviewing for Variety, wrote: "They and their sharp cast deliver a bubbly 90 minutes of entertainment as the play skillfully spices its middlebrow TV-chat-show essence with infusions of boldly orchestrated comedy." [6]

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References

  1. ↑ "The 2004 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Drama" pulitzer.org
  2. ↑ Demaline, Jackie. "Omnium-Gatherum timely hit at Humana Festival" The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 28, 2003
  3. ↑ Jones, Kenneth. "Last Weeks Announced for Darkly Funny 'Omnium Gatherum'; Play of Ideas Closes Nov. 30 Playbill, November 3, 2003
  4. ↑ Murray, Matthew. Omnium Gatherum: Off Broadway Theatre Review talkinbroadway.com, September 25, 2003
  5. ↑ Omnium Gatherum lortel.org, accessed July 18, 2016
  6. 1 2 Isherwood, Charles. "Review: ‘Omnium Gatherum’" Variety, September 25, 2003
  7. ↑ Hernandez, Ernio. "Seattle's ACT Theatre Plays New Drama Omnium Gatherum'" Playbill, October 10, 2003, retrieved October 5, 2017
  8. ↑ "'Omnium Gatherum': Two playwrights try to cope with Sept. 11" The Augusta Chronicle, October 13, 2003
  9. ↑ Brantley, Ben. "Theater Review. A Feisty Feast Of Wicked Wit" The New York Times, September 26, 2003
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