Magis Theatre Company, one of New York's most daring young theatre companies, created in 2003 by several alumni from the Columbia University MFA program in Acting, will present Her Name Is Vincent: An Evening with Edna St. Vincent Millay, at The Abingdon Theatre, 312 West 36th Street (6th floor), for a limited run of 17 performances October 29 through November 14, 2009.
The theatre event with music will be presented Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 PM and Saturdays at 2 PM. To order tickets by phone, call 866/811-4111. To buy tickets online visit www.magistheatre.org.
Her Name is Vincent is presented in two parts - Part 1: The Millay Sisters: A Cabaret, Meet the famous one, the charming one, and the one they left behind, and Part 2 - Aria da Capo, Millay's 1919 gem about love, war and greed.
The production features Margi Sharp, Rachel Murdy, Erika Iverson, Frank Mihelich, Thomas Piper and George Drance, who is also the Artistic Director of the company. It is staged by Cynthia Croot. The Musical Direction and Piano Performance are by Steven Katz.
The idea for this production was born two years ago when Margi Sharp Douglas and Rachel Murdy collaborated with director Cynthia Croot to create The Millay Sisters: A Cabaret, which played to delighted audiences at Don't' Tell Mama in midtown.
Called "Vincent" all her life, Millay was the sex goddess of a fast and fatAl Greenwich Village scene in the 1920s. "She was one of those women," said Edmund Wilson, "whose features are not perfect, but who, excited by the blood of the spirit, becomes almost supernaturally beautiful."
Margi Sharp Douglas and Rachel Murdy took on the roles of the Millay Sisters, inhabiting them in a dramatic cabaret show that illuminated not just Vincent, the famous one, and Norma, the charming one but also evoked the stark and tragic presence of little known writer and poet Kathleen Millay, the sister they left behind.
The project deepened when they joined forces with Magis Theatre Company to explore Millay's life further. Known for its forays into thought-provoking material (the New York Times says Magis "dares to be different"), the group transformed the cabaret by yoking it to Vincent's 1919 gem, Aria da Capo.
Poetic, flirtatious, anti-war, classically allusive, Aria da Capo had a triumphant premiere at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York. Alexander Woollcott wrote in the New York Times: "You should see this bitterly ironic little fantasy by Edna St. Vincent Millay . . . this is the most beautiful and most interesting play in the English language now to be seen in New York."
Magis' impulse was to bring together in one evening a complex portrait of Millay, to set her work within her life story. Giving voIce To her playfulness, embodying her sensual intelligence and her urge to self-destruction, Her Name Is Vincent renders the poet's life and death in vivid detail.
The Millay Sisters was conceived by Cynthia Croot, Margi Sharp Douglas and Rachel Murdy and was created in collaboration with Cynthia Croot, Margi Sharp Douglas, Rachel Murdy, Deborah Phillips and Steven Katz. Aria di Capo is produced by special arrangement with Baker's Plays.
