The Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse is traveling in time this summer, presenting on its Patricia Neal stage four plays that include a 12-hour acid trip in 1963, an African American family’s move north in 1950, a famous painter’s life in the late 1950s and a below-the-stairs drama set in 1912.
“None of them are outright comedies, but they all have comic moments, and heart and humor,” said playhouse artistic director MJ Bruder Munafo.
High Time, by playwright and seasonal Islander Larry Mollin, opens the season on June 2, with previews beginning this Friday, May 27. The play imagines what happened the day in 1963 when Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were fired from Harvard over their research with psychedelic drugs — which included recreational LSD use.
“It’s a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when you go rogue with a drug that was created for a different purpose,” Ms. Bruder Munafo said. “It’s not a pro-drug play at all.”
But Mr. Mollin says there is a “Cheech and Chong element” to the action. While Mr. Leary is tripping in Newton with Allen Ginsberg, Alan Watts and three young women whose names are less well-known today, the six of them struggle to comprehend the news of their fate as Mr. Alpert phones in from the university where he’s been called on the carpet for sharing drugs with an undergraduate.
“It’s fun to watch,” Mr. Mollin said, adding that the whistle-blower was another undergraduate named Andrew Weil — now Dr. Weil, M.D., an influential health advisor.
High Time is the third in Mr. Mollin’s trilogy of history-based plays set in the 1960s, the decade in which he first came to Martha’s Vineyard and performed with the Vineyard Players. “We did eight plays a season,” he recalled.
The previous two plays in his trilogy have also been produced by the Playhouse: The Screenwriter’s Daughter, about actress Jenny Hecht, and Search: Paul Clayton, set in the Greenwich Village folk milieu.
“I just felt there was something I had to say about the sixties,” Mr. Mollin said over coffee this week in Vineyard Haven, where he lives a short walk from the playhouse on Church street.
Directed by Tony nominee Randal Myler, the cast includes Mark Coffin as Mr. Leary, David Henry Gerson as Mr. Ginsberg, David PB Stephens as Mr. Watts, Victoria Adams-Zischke as JFK mistress Mary Meyer, Rachel Claire as dancer Rosemary Woodruff and Autumn Chiklis as Mr. Leary’s assistant Lisa Bieberman, the only one of the six who is still alive today.
The youngest cast members, Ms. Claire and Ms. Chiklis, both emerged this spring from graduate drama programs: Ms. Claire at the New York University Graduate Acting Program and Ms. Chiklis from the University of Southern California Schools of Dramatic and Cinematic Arts.
“We had to work around their graduations,” Mr. Mollin said.
Following High Time, which ends its run June 25, the playhouse will present Crumbs from the Table of Joy, a memory play by Pulitzer-winner Lynn Nottage. Set in 1950, it traces the move from Florida to Brooklyn by a widower and his two daughters. The New York Post has compared Ms. Nottage to both Tennessee Williams and Lorraine Hansberry. Directed by Adrienne D. Williams, it opens July 7 with previews beginning July 1. The last performance is July 30.
The best-known play in this season, Red by John Logan, won six Tony awards including Best Play in 2010. The taut two-character drama portrays painter Mark Rothko as he and an increasingly ambitious assistant create murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in 1958 and 1959. Ms. Munafo directs the play, which opens Aug. 11; previews begin Aug. 5 and the final performance is Sept. 3.
Ms. Bruder Munafo also directs The Second Girl, by Irish playwright Ronan Noone, running Sept. 15 through Oct. 8 with previews starting Sept. 9. This period drama imagines the life of three servants of the tragic Tyrone family in Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night.
“The Second Girl is close to my heart,” Ms. Bruder Munafo said, adding that Mr. Noone’s first home in America was on the Vineyard.
To cast the season, the playhouse held auditions in Boston and New York.
“We’re proud to be a union [Actors’ Equity] theatre,” Ms. Bruder Munafo said. “It gives us access to some of the best actors in the country, and also on the Vineyard. It’s really nice to have a combination of actors from everywhere.”
For more information visit the mvplayhouse.org.
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