A residency by playwright A.R. Gurney at the Off-Broadway Signature Theatre will kick off with a production of The Wayside Motor Inn directed by Lila Neugebauer, beginning previews August 12 and opening September 4.
Tickets for only $25 go on sale tomorrow, July 10, under the Signature Ticket Initiative: A Generation of Access affordable ticket pricing program. Visit Signature's website or call 212-244-7529.
New feuds and old grudges occupy ten people staying in the same a hotel outside Boston in this 1977 play. Gurney describes The Wayside Motor Inn as having "succumbed to the influence of the ingenious English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, who blithely plays with the limitations of the stage by limiting them even more." Here, multiple stories play out within a single motel room set, which stands in for multiple identical rooms. The play "makes unusually difficult demands on the actors" and "asks its audience to watch a juggler--me, the playwright--toss five plots into the air, letting them only occasionally touch each other."
The cast that will undertake this challenge has just been announced: Tony Award-nominee Marc Kudisch (Hand to God, 9 to 5) as Vince, Lizbeth Mackay (Picnic, Domesticated) as Jessie, Kelly AuCoin (The Call, "The Americans") as Andy, Jon DeVries (The Apple Family Plays, American Gangster) as Frank, Quincy Dunn-Baker (Signature Theatre’s The First Breeze of Summer, The Big Wedding) as Ray, Rebecca Henderson (The Whale, Too Much, Too Much, Too Many) as Ruth, Jenn Lyon ("Saint George," The Coast of Utopia) as Sharon, David McElwee ("Boardwalk Empire") as Phil, Ismenia Mendes (Much Ado About Nothing) as Sally and Will Pullen (Your Mother's Copy of the Kama Sutra) as Mark.
A.R. Gurney's Signature residency continues in spring 2015 with What I Did Last Summer directed by Jim Simpson.
