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Fresh-Water Pearl
Pearl Theatre glows in a new home
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The Pearl Theater is a gem. For 25 years, this resident repertory company has been committed to staging the classics – from Sophocles to Molière, Oscar Wilde to Tennesee Williams – with extraordinary results. Variety dubbed it the “premiere off–Broadway classical rep group” — with good reason.
The 11–member company, which has won the Tony, Obie and Drama Desk awards, boasts well–trained performers that pride themselves on theatrical versatility, while retaining the integrity of each role. Pearl actors are both technically proficient and capable of great range in style, period and character. For instance, Sean McNall, who played the sensitive Southern writer in Vieux Carre is a would–be Irish killer in Playboy of the Western World.
Founding artistic director Shepard Sobel said his goal was to approach each play on the playwright’s terms, so that style is a vehicle, rather than a substitute, for honesty. Now, after a quarter–century at the helm, alongside his wife, actress Joanne Camp, he has turned over his brainchild to artistic director J.R. Sullivan, who says “I believe in a theater that is adventurous, fearless, dedicated and true.”
The group’s next play, G.B. Shaw’s Misalliance, fits the bill. The comedy about the dangerous joys of sex, love and family is Shaw at his best. Sullivan states, “It’s studded with glorious comic twists and ironic plot turns. The play is replete with great characters, smart comedy and brilliant dialogue.”
Not only does the company have a new leader, it also has a new home. It has left the East Village, where it staged its works in the jewel–box Theater 80, to create its wonders at midtown’s City Center, Stage II, an intimate theater that seats 150. The Pearl is among a distinguished group of arts organizations that produce at City Center, including Manhattan Theatre Club, American Ballet Theatre, Paul Taylor Dance Company and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
To date, the Pearl Theatre Company has presented world premiere productions of 19 new translations, 14 of which it commissioned to be added to the existing canon. For the 2009–2010 season, the troupe will stage a theatrical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic Hard Times, crowded with eccentric circus performers, shrewd businessmen, cunning widows and downtrodden workers, and the Pulitzer–Prize winning The Subject Was Roses, Frank D. Gilroy’s touching tale of love and loss set in New York City at the end of World War II. — www.pearltheatre.org