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RELEASED: May 2, 2001
DANVILLE, KY—Centre College drama students will offer four performances of Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart. Under the direction of Sarah Standing, the shows run from May 9-12 (at 8 p.m.) in Weisiger Theatre at the Norton Center for the Arts in Danville.
The cast includes: William H. Johnston as Doc Porter, Brendan Adkins as Barnette Lloyd, Alison Furlong as Lenny Magrath, Whitney S. Christiansen as Meg Magrath, Laura Beth Adams as Babe Botrelle, and Amanda Beverly as Chick Boyle.
Beth Henley, playwright, screenwriter, and actress, first appeared in the critical spotlight in 1978 when Crimes of the Heart, a black comedy about three maladjusted sisters in Mississippi , won the Great American Play Contest sponsored by the Actors Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1981 the play won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best new American play and the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
Crimes of the Heart tells the funny, moving story about the demands, conflicts and bonds of sisterhood. The three central characters in the play are the Magrath sisters: Lenny, the eldest, unmarried at 30 and desperate; Meg, just back after a futile attempt to land a singing career in Los Angeles; and Babe, the youngest, trapped in a bad marriage and suffering from depression.
Director Standing reflects, "What is so brilliant about the style of this play is the combination of laughter and tears that it brings." Frank Rich in a New York Times review observed that Henley "gets her laughs not because she tells sick jokes but because she refuses to tell jokes at all. Her characters always stick to the unvarnished truth, at any price, never holding back a single gory detail. And the truth, when captured like lightening in a bottle, is far funnier than any invented wisecracks."
Sarah Standing has been a visiting instructor/theatre director at Centre College since 1998. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, Standing studied acting at the American Conservatory Theatre, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (London), and The Actors Studio. Sarah has directed in New York at Baruch College and for the Acting Class Program at the Pennsylvania Stage Company. She has taught at Baruch, John Jay, and Lehman Colleges in New York and is a Doctoral Candidate in Theatre at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Tickets may be purchased through the box office at Centre College's Norton Center for the Arts.
Telephone 859-236-4692.
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