Theater for the New City presents the world premiere of the play The Dark Outside, by English playwright Bernard Kops, running from Saturday, November 6 through Sunday, November 28. The play stars Austin Pendleton and Katharine Cullison. The play also features Jesse McCormick, Brenna Donahue and Kathleen Simmonds. Jack F. Serio directs.
This piece is the latest work for the stage by one of England’s greatest contemporary playwrights and is thematically similar to his most recent works of poetry. Kops’ body of work now includes over 40 plays, nine novels, ten books of poetry, numerous radio plays and two autobiographies.
The Dark Outside is about a birthday celebration for a one-armed East London tailor, who is in a life crisis that brings home his three grown children. All are facing traumatic changes. It falls to his wife—the family matriarch and unfailing strength—to hold the clan together. Songs and poetic outbursts are inspired because plain speech is insufficient for the family’s powerful feelings.
Austin Pendleton and Katharine Cullison were leading cast members of Kops’ Playing Sinatra, which Theater for the New City presented in 2013. The part of Helen in The Dark Outside was written for Cullison. Austin Pendleton is an actor, a director, a playwright and a teacher of acting at HB Studio in New York, where he studied with Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof. His most recent New York appearance as an actor has been in The Minutes by Tracy Letts, which will reappear this spring.
Tickets $18 general admission. The Dark Outside plays Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8:00 PM, Sundays at 3:00 PM. Box Office: www.theaterforthenewcity.net, 212-254-1109
Theater for the New City, 55 First Ave. (at E. 10th Street), NYC
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