| The Octette Bridge Club | |
|---|---|
| Written by | P.J. Barry |
| Date premiered | 1984 |
| Place premiered | Actors Theatre of Louisville |
| Original language | English |
| Setting | Providence, Rhode Island October 1934 and 1944 |
The Octette Bridge Club is a play by P.J. Barry. Set in Providence, Rhode Island, it focuses on eight sisters of Irish descent who meet on alternate Friday evenings to play bridge and gossip. The first act, which opens with the women posing for a photograph for the Sunday rotogravure section of the local newspaper, takes place in October 1934, and the second act is set just prior to Halloween ten years later.
A play is form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of dialogue or singing between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. Plays are performed at a variety of levels, from Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theater, to Community theatre, as well as university or school productions. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference as to whether their plays were performed or read. The term "play" can refer to both the written texts of playwrights and to their complete theatrical performance.
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. It was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He named the area in honor of "God's merciful Providence" which he believed was responsible for revealing such a haven for him and his followers. The city is situated at the mouth of the Providence River at the head of Narragansett Bay.
Rotogravure is a type of intaglio printing process, which involves engraving the image onto an image carrier. In gravure printing, the image is engraved onto a cylinder because, like offset printing and flexography, it uses a rotary printing press. Once a staple of newspaper photo features, the rotogravure process is still used for commercial printing of magazines, postcards, and corrugated (cardboard) and other product packaging.
Ann Conroy, married to a man who drinks too much, is a no-nonsense schoolteacher who hosts the bridge nights. Martha McDermitt, the widowed eldest sister, is known for her sense of responsibility and stern personality. Mary Margaret Donovan is a spinster who lives with younger sister Alice Monahan and her husband Walter, who have no children. In the second act, Mary Margaret uses a wheelchair and has a slight speech impediment due to a stroke. Nora Hiller is an easy-going woman devoted to her husband Lawrence and their children. Connie Emerson is always quick with a wisecrack. Lil Carmody is a free spirit who plays piano, and Betsy Bailey is the youngest, a melancholy married woman with two children who is struggling to find her own identity.
The play premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays, an annual event presented by the Actors Theatre of Louisville, in 1984. [1] The Broadway production, directed by Tom Moore, opened at the Music Box Theatre on March 5, 1985 following eight previews and closed after 24 performances. The cast included Elizabeth Huddle as Ann, Anne Pitoniak as Martha, Bette Henritze as Mary Margaret, Lois De Banzie as Alice, Elizabeth Franz as Nora, Nancy Marchand as Connie, Peggy Cass as Lil, and Gisela Caldwell as Betsy.
Humana Festival of New American Plays is an internationally renowned festival that celebrates the contemporary American playwright. Produced annually in Louisville, Kentucky by Actors Theatre of Louisville, this festival showcases new theatrical works and draws producers, critics, playwrights, and theatre lovers from around the world. The festival was founded in 1976 by Jon Jory, who was Producing Director of Actors Theatre of Louisville from 1969 to 2000. Since 1979 The Humana Festival has been sponsored by the Humana Foundation which is the philanthropic arm of Humana.
Actors Theatre of Louisville is a non-profit performing arts theater located in downtown Louisville, Kentucky.
Broadway theatre, also known simply as Broadway, refers to the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats located in the Theater District and Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world.
In his review for The New York Times , Frank Rich observed, "This synthetic play . . . has not so much been written as mechanically mapped out according to an open-and-shut formula. The exposition of each character's one or two stereotypical traits is accomplished by the photographer's rapid-fire journalistic questions in the opening scene; then the author slowly rolls out the skeleton in each sister's closet. Complexities of emotion and dramatic structure are neatly avoided by keeping all the menfolk offstage . . . Although the evening runs less than two hours, most of it is padding designed to space out the delayed plot revelations. There is plenty of gratuitous nostalgia . . . as well as an extremely tedious intrafamily talent contest performed after intermission." [2]
The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won 127 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. The Times is ranked 17th in the world by circulation and 2nd in the U.S.
Frank Hart Rich Jr. is an American essayist and liberal progressive op-ed columnist, who held various positions within The New York Times from 1980 to 2011. He has also produced television series and documentaries for HBO.
Pitoniak and Marchand were nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play but lost to Judith Ivey in Hurlyburly . John Lee Beatty was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design but lost to Heidi Ettinger for Big River . Carrie Robbins was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design but lost to Alexander Reid for Much Ado About Nothing .
The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play is an annual award presented by Drama Desk in recognition of achievements in the theatre among Broadway, Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway productions. The awards were established in 1955, with acting awards being given without making distinctions between roles in plays and musicals, or actors and actresses. The new award categories were later created in the 1975 ceremony.
Judith Lee Ivey is an American actress and theatre director. She received two Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performances in Steaming (1981) and Hurlyburly (1984).
Hurlyburly is a dark comedy play by David Rabe, first staged in 1984. The title refers to dialogue from Shakespeare's Macbeth.
