Stage Door News
Stage Door News
“And now you say you’ve given up praying just as easily as that. Because it was yours to discard if you wanted to. It was never ours. It was given to us and it could be taken away…”
February 2013 Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company in association with Obsidian Theatre Company present The Whipping Man at the Studio Theatre, Toronto Centre of the Arts.
Winner of the 2011 John Gassner New Play Award from the NY Outer Critics Circle, Matthew Lopez's The Whipping Man is set during Passover, 1865. The Civil War has just ended and the annual celebration of freedom from bondage is being observed in Jewish homes across the country. One of these homes, belonging to the DeLeons of Virginia, sits in ruins. Confederate officer Caleb DeLeon has returned from the war to find his family missing and only two former slaves, who were also raised Jewish, remaining. Caleb is badly wounded and the two men, Simon and John, are forced to care for him.
As the three men wait for the family's return, they wrestle with their shared past as master and slave, digging up long-buried family secrets along the way as well as new ones. Slavery and war, they discover, warp even good men's souls.
Directed by Philip Akin, starring Sterling Jarvis, Brett Donahue and Thomas Olajide, and set design by Sean Mulcahy, lighting by Andrew Smith and Sound by Christopher Stanton, THE WHIPPING MAN is a universal tale of loyalty, deception and deliverance.
"Passover, the holiday of freedom, has never been celebrated in such a compelling way as in Matthew Lopez’s searing new work, “The Whipping Man.” says David Eisner, Co-Artistic Director of the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company, “We are very proud and excited to partner with Obsidian Theatre Company for this production.”
"The Whipping Man will take our ideas of what freedom means and force us to look beneath the glib phrases and trite words,“ says director Philip Akin, “it lets us see how we have been shaped by a legacy that lasts until today."
The Whipping Man
Studio Theatre, Toronto Centre of the Arts
March 16- April 14, 2013
1-855-985-2787
http://www.hgjewishtheatre.com
Tickets: www.ticketmaster.ca or 1-855-985-2787
Photo: Sterling Jarvis. ©2013 Adam Rankin.
2013-02-18
Toronto: Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company and Obsidian Theatre present “The Whipping Man”