Media Contact: Susan Cipollaro, scipollaro@fairfield.edu, 203-254-4000 x2726
FAIRFIELD, Conn. (Oct. 16, 2019) —Theatre Fairfield, Fairfield University’s resident production company, will open its 2019-2020 season with five performances of Lee Blessing’s offbeat comedy Fortinbras. The production will be staged in the Wien Experimental Theatre at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts Wednesday, October 23 through Friday, October 25, at 8 p.m., with a 3 p.m. matinee on Saturday, October 26, and a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, October 27.
Tickets are $18 general admission, $5 for all students, and $10 for senior citizens and may be purchased in person at the Quick Center Box Office, by phone at (203)-254-4010, or online at www.quickcenter.com.
Fortinbras is a robust and ribald comedy that starts where Shakespeare’s Hamlet ends. An opportunistic, brash, and ambitious young man stumbles into the final scene of the Shakespearean classic, only to order the bodies of the royal family to be shuffled off as he devises the best possible media blitz to legitimize his ascension to the throne of Denmark.As inescapably relevant to today's political scene as the classic from which it is drawn, Fortinbras offers a comic interplay of wry literary criticism and contemporary wit that fans of television shows like VEEP or The Office will love. The humor is broad, the characters wild and unpredictable, and the situations they find themselves in are often more than not a little bawdy, violent, sexy, and slapstick. Throw in some sword fights, an accidental hanging, and some undiluted hanky-panky, and you start to scratch the surface on this imaginative, outrageous and timely comedy on the nature of getting and keeping power.
“Like so many successful works that use Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a springboard — such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, I Hate Hamlet, and even The Lion King — Fortinbras reimagines Hamlet in ways that will delight those who revere Shakespeare and those who couldn’t care less about the Bard,” said director Mark Torres, who previously directed Theatre Fairfield’s 2016 production of Pack of Lies. “This is a comedy anyone can enjoy.”
The Fortinbras cast stars Kiersten Bjork ’21, Carlin Fournier ‘22, Martha Hegley ’20, Maya Kapur ’22, Park Lytle ’21, Samantha Millette ’20, Declan Quigley ’22, Emily Ramsey ‘20, Michael Stack ’22, and Fallon Sullivan ’20. The production’s artistic team includes fight choreographer Dan Burke, scenic designer Lynne Porter, costume designer Julie Leavitt, lighting designer Lynne Chase, technical director Anne Kendall, and producer Martha LoMonaco, PhD.
Posted On: October 16, 2019
Volume: 52 Number: 35
Fairfield University is a modern, Jesuit Catholic university rooted in one of the world’s oldest intellectual and spiritual traditions. More than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students from the U.S. and across the globe are pursuing degrees in the University’s five schools. Fairfield embraces a liberal humanistic approach to education, encouraging critical thinking, cultivating free and open inquiry, and fostering ethical and religious values. The University is located on a stunning 200-acre campus on the scenic Connecticut coast just an hour from New York City.