produced by Julia Griffin '03 and Brooke Lampley '02

Loeb Mainstage

Filmed in 1994 as The Madness of King George, Alan Bennett's historical-fictional tale of English monarch George III's bouts of madness was a stage drama before it became a film, and theater is a fitting medium for a play that muses on the theatricality of the monarchy. Chronicling the personal and political fallout of George's episodes of what was probably porphyria, a metabolism disorder affecting factors from urine color to sensitivity to light, Bennett's script is renowned for its wit and inventiveness-and for its difficulty. Director Frederick Hood '01 has the energies of a large cast to focus, and how well he does so will likely determine not whether George III will be an event, which seems predestined, but what sort of adjectives will be recalled to describe it after the fact. Co-producer Julia Griffin '03 remains confident. The technical complexity of the production isn't overwhelming, she notes. Light and sound cues number about 100 for the two-hour-plus run time. And the short time between Common Casting and the performance dates has necessitated a rehearsal period that makes up in intensity what it lacks in duration. Griffin wryly observes that the cast and crew haven't had time to let George III be anything but their top priority.

The Memory of Water

October 22 to November 5

by Shelagh Stephenson