Country Teamwork - Stage Directions Magazine

on by their fingers. A young couple has moved into theneighboring empty house; these squatters are addictswho met in rehab. The play concerns the strange relationshipof the two disparate couples.Austin found that D’Amour had an acute ear for dialogue,and had written a play that is aching and humorous,full of anxiety but also witty, ironic, edgy. He recognizeda play that is truly contemporary, exactly aboutwhat is happening now, but “going way beyond meredepression, beyond even spiritual malaise. The charactersdon’t know what they are doing, there is no reliablemarker. The play doesn’t get explicitly political, yet hasdefinite political implications.”Though it received largely favorable reviews, it was feltthat it did not go deep enough, that it did not do full justiceto the darkness of the situation. Thus, before it openson Broadway, playwright and director will get togetherto make it deeper and darker. Meanwhile, Pendleton willalso work on a musical success in Chicago, A Minister’sWife, for which he wrote the book, as it transfers, recast,to Lincoln Center. It is no mean challenge to have basedit on Bernard Shaw’s Candida, which he once directed andwith whose brilliance his own libretto must seamlesslyblend.But he’ll carry it off—or should I say “they” will carry itoff? For Pendleton is three big guns in one: actor, directorand playwright; so why should a mere musical book bemuch of a problem to “them”?Join UsBackstageAtTheatreFace.comwww.stage-directions.com • March 2011 15