Tennessee Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore at Fountain Theatre
Fountain Theatre (5060 Fountain Ave Los Angeles, CA 90029)
- Full Price:
- $15.00 - $28.00
- Our Price:
- $7.50 - $14.00*
* Additional fees apply.
All offers for The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore have expired.
The last date listed for The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore was Sunday November 18, 2007 / 2:00pm.
19 Goldstar Member Reviews
The lead actress is fabulous!! It was a riveting play - although long! I am recommending it to my friends.Written on Sep 27 2007
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Sandee
The play was pretty good, but I had to leave during intermission because I was so uncomfortable. The seats are stiff and cramped and angled in a strange way. I wish I could have stayed for the entire show, but the play was scheduled for 2 hours, 40 minutes, and I just couldn't sit there with my bad back through the whole thing.Written on Oct 15 2007
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Meg
This was a really wonderful evening of theater, enjoyed by everyone in my group. Although I am a fan of Tennessee Williams, this is one play I was not familiar with so I didn't know what to expect. I loved it and was once again thrilled with the exceptional performances and masterful direction from the Fountain Theater. This play is well worth seeing and I will recommend it to friends.Written on Sep 28 2007
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Roger
2nd tier Williams. 1st tier production. Recommended.Written on Apr 07 2008
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More Information About The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
Quotes & Highlights
- "Go! Superb - Director Simon Levy and a terrific cast headed by Karen Kondazian do a magnificent job of bringing this black comedy to life. The production design is as superb as the cast." LA Weekly
- Critics Pick! - "Director Simon Levy skillfully manages to make this world of isolation, privilege, deception, lust, and hallucination work as a richly textured whole." Back Stage West
- “The Fountain Theatre's new production lunges into this problematic play with energy and enthusiasm! The cast is deliciously game." Los Angeles Times
Description
The Fountain Theatre presents the Los Angeles revival of Tennessee Williams' rarely produced black comedy. Flora Goforth, immensely wealthy and outrageous and living high atop her secure Italian villa overlooking the Mediterranean and the Divina Costiera, dictates her memoirs to her secretary, Blackie, when they are disrupted by the violent and mysterious arrival of a handsome and charismatic poet. Mrs. Goforth decides she wants him as a lover, but he's there for other reasons. When they are visited by the Witch of Capri, the Marchesa Constance Ridgeway-Condotti, the true identity of the poet is revealed: He is known as the “Angel of Death.”
About the Cast
Karen Kondazian (Mrs. Goforth) completed her schooling at the University of Vienna and The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Her first professional work was in the award winning production of Michael Cacoyannis' The Trojan Women at The Circle in the Square Theater in New York. Her theater career has included working opposite Ed Harris in Sweet Bird of Youth, with Richard Chamberlain in Richard II at the Ahmanson Theater, and Stacy Keach in Hamlet at the Mark Taper Forum. She won an L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for her performance in The Rose Tattoo (in which her work both as an actor and producer so impressed Tennessee Williams that he gave her carte blanche to produce any of his works in his lifetime). Other awards and nominations include Ovation, Drama Critics Circle and Garlands for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Berkeley Rep; Orpheus Descending at Fountain Theatre; Night of the Iguana at Old Globe Theatre and at Fountain Theatre; and Lady House Blues and Freedom Land at South Coast Repertory. Her most recent awards have gone to her long-running performance as Maria Callas in Master Class (Fountain Theatre, Odyssey Theatre and the SBT production at the Lobrero Theater in Santa Barbara). In 2005, she starred in Eduardo Machado's Off-Broadway play, Kissing Fidel.
Lisa Pelikan (Blackie) last appeared with The Fountain Theatre in Daisy In The Dreamtime. Other recent L.A. theater credits include: The Glass Menagerie at The Colony Theatre and The Odyssey Theatre's Communicating Doors. She received an L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for the West Coast Premiere of Craig Lucas’ Blue Window and a Drama-Logue Award for creating the infamous Zelda Fitzgerald in Only A Broken String Of Pearls, a one-woman show. NYC Theater credits include Panache, Jim Leonard's The Diviners and Arthur Miller's The American Clock. She has starred in many films including “Perfect Gentlemen” with Lauren Bacall, "Lionheart" with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jonathan Demme’s “Swing Shift” with Goldie Hawn, “Return to the Blue Lagoon” and "Jennifer," the cult horror film in which she stars as the snake-worshipping Jennifer. Lisa made her feature film debut in Fred Zinnemann's "Julia," sharing the title role with Vanessa Redgrave.
Michael Rodgers (The Poet) began his career in theater in his native country, Scotland, where he participated in a multitude of plays throughout the UK. After moving to Los Angeles he began his L.A. theater work at Pacific Resident Theatre in Arthur Miller's A View from a Bridge as Rodolfo, Michael in Jean Cocteaus’s Les Parents Terribles, Lvov in Chekhov’s Ivanov, Pinter’s The Collection and many others. Films include “Gia” with Angelina Jolie, “Uncorked” with Minnie Driver and Sir Nigel Hawthorne, “The Patriot” with Mel Gibson, and “Thomas and the Magic Railroad” with Alec Baldwin and Peter Fonda. His indie film credits include notable roles in Alison Ander's “Sugartown,” “Klepto,” Robert Burns in “Red Rose,” “Sinner,” and his portrayal as Richard Dawson in the Bob Crane biopic by Paul Schrader, “Auto Focus.” Some television work includes roles on “NYPD Blue,” “CSI,” “Veronica Mars,” “American Family,” “American Dreams,” “Windfall,” “Bones,” “Will & Grace” and “The Triangle” for Sci-Fi Channel.
Scott Presley (The Witch of Capri) hails from Somerset, KY. He went to the New Actors Workshop in New York where he studied with Mike Nichols and Paul Sills. Being in L.A. for the past 13 years, he has done numerous stage productions including Southern Baptist Sissies, written and directed by Del Shores. He is widely known throughout L.A. as “BelleAire” and has a long-running drag show in West Hollywood. He will be starring in the movie version of “Sissies” at the end of this year.
About the Creative Team
Simon Levy (director) has been the Producing Director/Dramaturg with the Fountain since 1993. His stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby inaugurated the Guthrie Theater's new theatre complex in July 2006, was produced at Seattle Rep in November 2006, and is in preparation for a 2008 London production. He's currently writing the stage version of Tennessee Williams' novella The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone for production in 2008.
His critically acclaimed production of What I Heard About Iraq, which he adapted and directed, won the 2006 Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, was extended several times at the Fountain Theatre, was nominated by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards for Best Adaptation, was produced at the 2007 Adelaide Fringe Festival, where it won the Advertiser Fringe Award, has been produced by BBC 4 in 2007, and received a 30-city UK tour in 2007 which culminated at the Arts Theatre in London. It has been read/performed in 45 cities around the world.
He recently remounted his award-winning production (Ovation Award Best Production 2004) of Master Class for Santa Barbara Theatre, January 2007; and directed Dael Orlandersmith (of Yellowman fame) in her one-woman play, The Gimmick, September/October 2006 at the Fountain.
His adaptation of Gatsby (a Finalist for the 2007 PEN Literary Award in Drama) is the first given exclusive rights by the Fitzgerald Estate in 80 years. It completes his Fitzgerald Trilogy of stage adaptations, which includes Tender Is the Night (winner of the PEN West Literary Award in Drama, seven Drama-Logue awards including Best Production and Direction, as well as numerous other awards, and has been published in the Modern American Literature Series, Prestige Books), and The Last Tycoon (winner of five Back Stage West/Drama-Logue awards, including Best Adaptation and Best Direction, and was nominated for the prestigious Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Ted Schmitt Award for Original Play).
Some of his other directing credits include: Daisy in the Dreamtime, Night of the Iguana, Summer and Smoke, and Orpheus Descending at The Fountain; Accomplice for The Colony Theatre; Awake & Sing for International City Theatre; Uncle Vanya for Actor's Co-op; the Off-Broadway premiere of James Mellon's Unfinished Song at the Provincetown Playhouse; and award-winning productions at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, including Lynne Kaufman's The Couch.
Tennessee Williams (playwright) was born on March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. In 1927, Williams got his first taste of literary fame when he took third place in a national essay contest sponsored by The Smart Set magazine. In 1937, he had two of his plays (Candles to the Sun and The Fugitive Kind) produced by Mummers of St. Louis, and in 1938, he graduated from the University of Iowa. After failing to find work in Chicago, he moved to New Orleans and changed his name from "Tom" to "Tennessee" which was the state of his father's birth.
In 1939, the young playwright received a $1,000 Rockefeller Grant, and a year later, Battle of Angels was produced in Boston. In 1944, what many consider to be his best play, The Glass Menagerie, had a very successful run in Chicago and a year later burst its way onto Broadway.
Williams followed up his first major critical success with several other Broadway hits including such plays as A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, and Camino Real. He received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire, and reached an even larger worldwide audience in 1950 and 1951 when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were made into major motion pictures. Later plays, which were also made into motion pictures, include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (for which he earned a second Pulitzer Prize in 1955), Orpheus Descending, and Night of the Iguana.
Williams met and fell in love with Frank Merlo in 1947 while living in New Orleans. But in 1961, Merlo died of lung cancer and the playwright went into a deep depression that lasted for ten years. It was during this period that he wrote Milk Train.