Bonjour City Garagistes,
We are happy this weekend to bring you Part 2 of our “Three By Mee” project from 2006, “The Bacchae” by Charles L. Mee.
Like the first part (“Agamemnon”), “The Bacchae” is based on the Greek tragedy of the same name by Euripides. This production was lauded by critics from the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCRW, and Backstage West.
It will be on our YouTube channel from Friday evening through midnight on Wednesday. Please be aware, this production contains nudity.
Here is the link:
The Bacchae
We so much appreciate all the support so many of you have shown over these last few months. We can’t wait to get back to work and show you new plays but the virus won’t let us yet. So in the meantime, we hope you watch our City Garage classics from years past. Please share the link with your friends! And encourage them to be supporters too.
Merci for our donors from this last week:
Michael Intriere
Spec Script Marketplace
And we still have lots of interesting videos from our actors running on our City Garage YouTube channel from these last months. If you haven’t watched them all yet, please do check them out. We are also now adding mini-plays on our Chuffed page, so take a look!
Love,
Frederique
Visit the City Garage Virtual Cabaret! New videos daily!
“The Bacchae” by Charles L. Mee originally ran at City Garage from September 8 to October 22, 2006. It was directed by Frédérique Michel with Production Design by Charles A. Duncombe. The cast was Ed Baccari, Juni Buchér, Irene Casarez, Joan Chodorow, Justin Davanzo, Katherine Dollison, Duff Dugan, Troy Dunn, David E. Frank, Joel Nuñez, Nita Mickley, Mariko Oka, Julie Weidmann, and Mark Woods.
What the Critics Said in 2006:
LA Weekly — GO!
LA Times — RECOMMENDED!
Backstage West — CRITIC’S PICK!
KCRW – “Michel is a perfect match for the playwright’s work.”
KCRW:
Frederique Michel’s fleshy production is the type of show that would have been shut down by the authorities 40 years ago… Just as Mee is no slave to Euripides, Ms. Michel is no slave to Mee…. Michel is a perfect match for the playwright’s work, because rather than simply amplify Mee’s remix of the Bacchae, she remixes it again in her own way.
LA Times:
Thanks to FrederÌque Michel’s insightful staging, the play retains its requisite sense of mystery and menace… In Charles Duncombe’s superb production design, the action opens on a drifting vessel filled with drowsing women resting between their revels.
LA Weekly:
Director FrederÌque Michel displays a confident scenarist’s eye in her stage compositions, and her production shimmers with a languid beauty. She’s ably assisted by production designer Charles A. Duncombe, whose weathered shoreline set, complete with beached boat, gives a sense of shipwrecked ambition, and whose velvety lighting bathes the ensemble, many of whom appear nude or seminude. Josephine Poinsot’s witty costuming swings from modern to timelessly diaphanous.
Backstage West:
Michel’s direction is right on target for this piece, illuminating Mee’s evocative text with a beautiful stillness of imagery and performance. Dunn, in a strong portrayal, is alternately convincing and repulsive as the voice of civilization, arguing in a vacuum for a cause that already seems doomed. Davanzo is darkly seductive as Dionysus, luring us into the pleasures of the natural world, while toying with our frailties as mere mortals. The rest of the ensemble is solid, supporting the disturbing and provocative tone of the piece. The marvelous set by Charles Duncombe adds to the cosmic subtext.