While eating a quiet dinner at home, Mr. and Mrs. “Fritz” Fitzhubert (along with an uninvited guest) are summoned through a mysterious tiny door in their living room. On the other side, they find themselves in a phantasmagorical Alpen hotel where forgotten religions seep in through the cracks in the walls. Lost relatives, conniving employees, and chatty society ladies awaken their mysterious ancient selves and lead them on perilous hikes that will leave their lives forever altered.
Sibyl Kempson and Elevator Repair Service’s Fondly, Collette Richland (MAP 2014) premieres September 11 and runs through October 18 at New York Theater Workshop. ERS joined forces with Kempson in their first collaboration with a living playwright to create a new original play, a richly detailed and darkly comedic world brought to life by the ERS ensemble under the direction of Artistic Director John Collins.
Fondly, Collette Richland has been on fire in the news lately. Here are some of our favorite updates and highlights:
+ Sibyl Kempson spoke with Time Out NY’s Helen Shaw on feminist sources and impulses, expanding, “My eyes really have been opened to the truth of the female predicament and the experience of what female power actually is. It’s not really talked about because it has to do with female menstrual periods, and that is “personal” and “private” and something we really shouldn’t just go around talking about. All the same, it’s a human phenomenon that affects everything—so many human interactions and transactions—in a subtle but very powerful way, all the time. FCR [Fondly, Collette Richland] is largely about the deification of those phenomena in ancient times and is an attempt to bring them into modern-day relevance on the same par with that ancient significance. Which takes the form of something hidden and buried re-emerging.”
+ The New York Times featured Fondly, Collete Richland and its emergence from a “collaboration of wacky and weird.” On ERS’ decision to shift course after a series of successful adaptations, Artistic Director and FCR director John Collins said, “We were looking for something that scared us. Deciding that we would work with a playwright and do a new play was in some way the scariest thing we could imagine,” adding, “The risk that it is difficult. The risk that it is going to be seen as impenetrable. These are necessary risks for me.”
+ Elevator Repair Service has Twitter game like no other. Hashtags include #SibylSource for photos from playwright Sibyl Kempson’s sources and archives, #PhantasmagoricalProps (self-explanatory), and #FondlyColletteRichland for everything related to the upcoming premiere.
Tickets and more information available here.
