ABOUT | Now in its 24th season, focusing on the theme of “Hope,” Metropolitan Playhouse is devoted to the exploring and enriching America’s theatrical legacy, and the discovery of that tradition’s place in world theater. Metropolitan focuses on three types of productions: forgotten American masterpieces, new plays based on America’s history and literature, and works from around the world that put these American works in context.
CURRENTLY ON THE BOARDS |A second marriage comes with more than one second chance, in “The Awful Truth.” It’s the first revival of Arthur Richman’s never-published 1921 hit comedy, which revolves around New York socialite Lucy Warriner — who, before she can remarry, must put to rest the rumor that her first husband divorced her because she had an affair.
While enlisting her ex to reassure her new fiancé’s family, he tells Lucy privately that he knows she cheated on him. She denies it, and they give very different accounts of their failed marriage. One thing is not in dispute, however: they are more in love now than they were then.
Equal parts wit and warmth, the play asks what chance friendship, love, or marriage have if they depend on knowing “The Awful Truth.”
Through Oct. 18. Thurs.–Sat. at 7:30 p.m. and Sun. at 3 p.m. Also Wed. Oct. 7 & 14 and Sat. Oct. 10 & 17 at 3 p.m. At Metropolitan Playhouse (220 E. Fourth St. btw. Aves. A & B). For tickets ($25, $20 for students/seniors, $10 for children), call 800-939-3006 or visit metropolitanplayhouse.org.
UPCOMING | Nov. 13–Dec. 13, “Alison’s House” is Susan Glaspell’s 1930 Pulitzer Prize winner about a family struggling with how to celebrate and protect the legacy of a famous, but famously reclusive, ancestor. A January 2016 festival has guest companies celebrating the most hopeful of American writers and thinkers: The Transcendentalists. From April 11–May 1, 2016, the Seventh Annual East Village Theater Festival will present all-new one-act plays inspired by the life and lore of the Lower East Side.
WHAT MAKES METROPOLITAN GREAT
By Marvin Carlson / Sidney E. Cohn Professor of Theatre / The Graduate Center / The City University of New York
Metropolitan Playhouse is one of the jewels of the Downtown theatre scene, with a unique mission that it fulfills admirably and engagingly. It specializes in American plays of the late 19th and early 20th century, offering occasional works that one has heard of but rarely (if ever) seen, and much more often works which, even when popular in their own day, have been undeservedly forgotten.
With invariably strong casts and illuminating direction, Metropolitan gives new life to these works — revealing their theatrical power and, not infrequently, their continuing relevance to today’s social, cultural and personal concerns. Season themes tie the works together and put them in dialogue with each other, but the real achievement of the theatre is in the revelation of worthy but undeservedly forgotten dramas from our country’s theatrical past.
Their ongoing work continually enriches and deepens our national dramatic heritage, and the many pleasurable evenings I have spent in this theatre have proven a most rewarding blend of entertainment and enlightenment.
