Goodman Theatre Artistic Director and American Actor Brian Dennehy Play well together.
Play is serious stuff - it is what we call Art. Only Man takes earth and makes a world of it - that is eventually what gets to be called Art after much play and hard work. These two men have taken play to the very serious levels that become Great Art.
Since 1986, when Robert Falls directed Brian Dennehy in the Goodman Theatre production of Bertold Brecht's The Life of Galileo the two men have collaborated to create the greatest examples of Theatre Art in modern Time.
This week the Goodman Theatre opened production of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms
Desire Under the Elms
Directed by Robert Falls
Featuring Brian Dennehy, Carla Gugino, Boris McGiver, Daniel Stewart Sherman and Pablo Schreiber
Tony Award-winning Artistic Director Robert Falls' Desire Under the Elms starring the acclaimed, Tony Award-winner Brian Dennehy will be the centerpiece of an exploration of Eugene O'Neill in the 21st century.
Master American playwright Eugene O’Neill conceived Desire Under the Elms as he slept one night, imbuing it with the emotional pitch of a fever dream. Ephraim Cabot returns to his remote New England farmhouse with his third wife—the alluring, headstrong young Abbie—launching his three grown sons into a bitter fight for their inheritance. When Ephraim’s youngest son sets his sights on Abbie, the resulting tempest brings tragic consequences.
In 1986, I saw the Dennehy/Falls Magic on the stage of the old Goodman Theatre with Galileo. It was overpowering.
Dennehy was exuberantly graceful, witty and brilliant. I recall this wonderful passage ( Galileo has built a telescope and shows the moon to his disciple and confounds human thought and assumptions with this discovery):
GALILEO: How do you explain those luminous spots?
SAGREDO : It cannot be.
GALILEO: But it is. They are mountains.
SAGREDO : On a star?
GALILEO: Giant mountains. Whose summits are gilded by the rising sun,
whilst all around night still covers their slopes. You see the light descending
from the topmost peaks into the valleys.
SAGREDO: But that contradicts all astronomy for the last two thousand
years.
GALILEO : Yet that’s how it is. What you see has never been seen by any
man besides myself. You are the second.
That's how it is. Get to the Goodman!
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