
September 17–October 11
NOW EXTENDED THROUGH OCTOBER 11
Written and directed by Israel Horovitz
NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE
About the Play Stumpy and Latham are working-class housepainters in Gloucester. Husband-and-wife Bummy and Lexi are their upscale clients. Blue may be the color on the walls, but blood red and blackmail emerge as the dominant palette in this dark comedy, the latest offering by Gloucester Stage’s Founding Artistic Director Israel Horovitz. Hang onto your dropcloths, because Horovitz is about to take you into a story painted with the brush of seduction, betrayal, and deceit. Who will cash in their paint chips first and take a fall? And who will be left standing when the last lies are told? Strong language and some adult situations.
Why It’s for You If these walls could talk . . . your remodeling projects have never witnessed what happens in Gloucester Blue with its scenes of extreme greed, subtle manipulation, and illicit sex. But the issues and tensions brought on by gentrification and fiscal inequality happen around you all the time. The push and pull of relationships in this tale of economic and extramarital attractions will leave you with lots of reasons to find common ground.
Esme Allen* (Lexi) Boston-area acting credits include North Shore Fish (Gloucester Stage Company); Muckrakers, The Elephant Man and Amadeus (New Repertory Theatre), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stoneham Theatre); The Cherry Orchard, Middletown and The Merry Wives of Windsor (Actors’ Shakespeare Project); and Coriolanus (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company). Television credits include The Devil You Know (HBO); The Good Wife (CBS). Scenic design credits include Bridge Repertory Theater’s current production of Salome, Julius Caesar and Gidion’s Knot. She earned her MFA in Acting from The California Institute of the Arts. Esme is a Founding Artistic Associate of The Bridge Repertory Theater of Boston and teaches acting at Salem State University.
Francisco Solorzano* (Stumpy) has led the award-winning, critically acclaimed ensemble, Barefoot Theatre Company for the past 16 years. He is one of the newest members of the prestigious Actors Studio Playwright Directors Unit. Off-Broadway: World premiere, stage adaptation of Dog Day Afternoon (NYC); Israel Horovitz’s Sins of the Mother (GSC, Florida Stage). Most recently, acted in and co-produced two short films with Barefoot Studio Pictures, The Girl with the Jacket, written and directed by Caitlin FitzGerald, and Floating Sunflowers (directed by Francisco Solorzano) with Anna Chlumsky, Lynn Cohen, and Christopher Whalen. Collaborated on award-winning revivals, New York, and World Premieres with some of the most prolific companies including: Labyrinth Theater Company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Florida Stage, Gloucester Stage, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Stella Adler Theatre, Theatre Row Theatres. BFA in Acting from CUNY’s Brooklyn College; recipient of the Graduate Theater Organization of Brooklyn College, CUNY’s Alumnus of the Year Award. Currently splits his time between his home in Brooklyn, New York, and Hollywood, CA.
Robert Walsh* (Latham/Fight Director) Off-Broadway: Gloucester Blue (Cherry Lane Theatre, developmental production), Big Maggie (Douglas Fairbanks Theatre), Penelope (Perry St. Theatre), company member: Theater of the Open Eye and Riverside Shakespeare Company. Boston: Other GSC acting credits include Sins of the Mother, The Subject Was Roses, The Barking Sharks and Two for The Seesaw. Founding company member, Actors Shakespeare Project (Theseus, Wolsey, Agamemnon/Pandarus, Falstaff, Bottom, Antonio, Titus, Polonius, Brutus); Ah, Wilderness! and Hamlet (Huntington Theatre Company); Our Town, Mass Appeal, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Merrimack Repertory Theatre), ‘ART’, The Cocktail Hour (New Repertory Theatre), Next Fall (SpeakEasy Stage Company), and Coriolanus, Macbeth, Henry V (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company), among others. Regional: Streamers (Arena Stage); Anna Christie (StageWest Theatre Company); Romeo and Juliet (Portland Stage Company); Peter Pan (Barter Theatre); The Children’s Hour (American Stage Festival). Television: Body of Proof (ABC); Matty’s Waltz; One Life To Live; The Guiding Light; Another World. Film: Black Mass and Hollygrove (both soon-to-be-released), Evening, State and Main, Amistad, Eight Men Out, The Spanish Prisoner, In Dreams, Turk 182! Faculty: ART/Harvard MXAT and Brandeis University.
Lewis D. Wheeler* (Bummy) Lewis is delighted to return to Gloucester Stage where he appeared in Doubt: A Parable and An Ideal Husband and directed Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth. Regional credits: No Man’s Land—IRNE Nomination, Best Supporting Actor (American Repertory Theater); Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Pattern of Life, Muckrakers (New Repertory Theatre); Chosen Child—IRNE Nomination, Best Supporting Actor (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre); The Importance of Being Earnest, A Number, The Glass Menagerie (Lyric Stage Company of Boston); Arcadia, Troilus and Cressida (Publick Theatre); five seasons at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre (WHAT); also American Stage (Florida), the Nora Theatre Company, Underground Railway Theater, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Huntington Theatre Company, Stoneham Theatre, Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, Wheelock Family Theatre, Shakespeare Now! Theatre Company. A founding member of Harbor Stage Company, he performed in The Seagull and Hedda Gabler and directed David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones. Film/TV: The Company Men, Pink Panther 2, Louisa May Alcott (PBS), Brotherhood, upcoming Kenneth Lonergan film Manchester-by-the-Sea and Whitey Bulger saga Black Mass. Lewis’s father was renowned director David Wheeler, whose GSC credits include Speak Well of the Dead / The Crazy Girl (2002) with Jill Clayburgh and Lily Rabe. Lewis earned his BA in Theatre and Film Studies at Cornell University and MFA from American Film Institute. Proud member of Actors’ Equity Association since 2004.
Israel Horovitz (Director) Playwright-director Israel Horovitz’s 70+ plays have been translated and performed in as many as 30 languages, worldwide. His plays have introduced such actors as Al Pacino, John Cazale, Jill Clayburgh, Marsha Mason, Gerard Depardieu, and many others.) Best-known plays include Line (now in its 45th year off-Broadway, NYC’s longest-running play, ever), The Indian Wants The Bronx, It’s Called The Sugar Plum, Rats, Morning, The Primary English Class, The Wakefield Plays (Alfred the Great, Our Father’s Failing, Alfred Dies, Hopscotch, The 75th, Stage Directions and Spared), The Widow’s Blind Date, The Growing Up Jewish Trilogy (Today, I Am A Fountain Pen, A Rosen By Any Other Name, and The Chopin Playoffs), Park Your Car In Harvard Yard, North Shore Fish, Fighting Over Beverley, Lebensraum, My Old Lady, Unexpected Tenderness, Fast Hands, 6 Hotels (The Wedding Play, Speaking of Tushy, Beirut Rocks, The Audition Play, Fiddleheads and Lovers, and 2nd Violin), Compromise, and The Secret of Mme. Bonnard’s Bath. Recent plays include The Bump, Sins of the Mother, What Strong Fences Make, The P Word, Virtual Alex, Gloucester Blue, Man In Snow, and Out of the Mouths of Babes, which will open in NYC next spring starring Estelle Parsons and Judith Ivey. Screenplays include Author! Author!, The Strawberry Statement (Prix du Jury, Cannes Film Festival), Sunshine (European Academy Award – Best Screenplay), New York, I Love You, James Dean, 3 Weeks After Paradise and My Old Lady, which Horovitz wrote and directed, starring Maggie Smith, Kevin Kline and Kristin Scott-Thomas. Horovitz’s memoires Un New-Yorkais a Paris were recently published in France, where he is the most-produced American playwright in French theatre history. Awards include OBIE (twice), Prix Italia, Sony Radio Academy Award, Writers Guild of Canada Best Screenwriter Award, Christopher Award, Drama Desk Award, Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Lifetime Achievement Award from B’Nai Brith, Boston Public Library’s Literary Lights Award, Massachusetts Governor’s Award,) and many others. Horovitz was recently decorated as Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s highest honor awarded to foreign artists. He is Founding Artistic Director of Gloucester Stage, and active Artistic Director of the New York Playwrights Lab, and is co-artistic director of Compagnia Horovitz-Paciotto in Italy. NYC’s Barefoot Theatre celebrated Horovitz’s 70th birthday by organizing The 70/70 Horovitz Project, a year-long event with 70 Horovitz plays having had readings and/or productions by theatres around the globe. He is married to Gillian Horovitz, former England National Marathon Champion and record-holder. The Horovitz family divides its time among homes in NYC, Gloucester, Massachusetts, and London.
Chelsea Kerl (Costume Designer) is so pleased to be working with Gloucester Stage for the first time on Gloucester Blue. She recently graduated from Boston University with an MFA in Costume Design, having previously attended the University of Maryland, where she received degrees in both Theatre and English. She has been working as a freelance designer in the Boston area for four years, and her work has been previously seen at Brown Box Theatre Project (Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet), Stoneham Theatre (Luna Gale, Walking the Tightrope), and Stoneham’s young company (Godspell, Comedy of Errors, Piggy Nation, Spamalot, Little Mermaid Jr), Groton School (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), and New Repertory Theatre (The Little Prince, Assassins, Tongue of a Bird), among other places. She has also worked sewing in the costume shops of several local theatres, including Boston Conservatory and American Repertory Theater. More of her work can be seen at www.chelseakerl.com.
Brian J. Lilienthal (Lighting Designer) This is Mr. Lilienthal’s first production at Gloucester Stage. Regional: Over 250 productions at Huntington Theatre Company, Arizona Theatre Company, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Cleveland Playhouse, The Pasadena Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Arden Theatre Company, Trinity Repertory Company, among many. Mr. Lilienthal has designed operas for Long Beach Opera, Bard SummerScape, Portland Opera Repertory Theatre. He has won the Los Angeles Ovation Award for lighting design, and has been nominated multiple times for Boston’s IRNE Award. He has spent nine summers as the resident lighting designer for the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center. MFA: California Institute of the Arts. Mr. Lilienthal currently teaches lighting design at Tufts University, and is a member of the newly formed Patriots Program at Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell, MA. He lives in Somerville, MA, and is a drummer with a rockabilly trio that performs throughout New England.
Jenna McFarland Lord (Scenic Designer) Jenna has designed for the Gloucester Stage Company since 2003 and was the resident set designer for GSC from 2003–2013. GSC credits include: North Shore Fish, Spring Awakening, Round and Round the Garden, Living Together, Table Manners, Trying, Breath of Life, Sins of the Mother, Doubt: A Parable, The Widow’s Blind Date, The Belle of Amherst, My Old Lady, Dinner with Friends, LifeX3, Spinning into Butter, The Loman Family Picnic. Other Boston area credits: Something’s Afoot, Distant Music (both IRNE award nominations for Best Set Design), It’s a Wonderful Life, Steel Magnolias, The Porch, Guys on Ice, The Mousetrap (Addison Award for Best Set Design) (Stoneham Theatre); Big Fish, The Color Purple, In The Heights, The Drowsy Chaperone (IRNE award nomination for Best Set Design), The Great American Trailer Park Musical, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Theatre District, and Moonlight Room (SpeakEasy Stage Company); Collected Stories, Cherry Docs (both IRNE award nominations for Best Set Design) (New Repertory Theatre); Groundswell, November, This Wonderful Life (Lyric Stage Company of Boston); The Merry Wives of Windsor, Macbeth (Actors Shakespeare Project); Don Giovanni (New England Conservatory); Noises Off, Oklahoma, The Full Monty, Twelfth Night, Cosi Fan Tutte (The Boston Conservatory); A View from the Bridge, Escape From Happiness (Brandeis University). Off-Broadway: The Secret of Mme. Bonnard’s Bath (New York Playwrights’ Lab). Ms. McFarland Lord received her theatre training at Emerson College and she is currently the set design teacher at the Boston Arts Academy, a public high school for the arts. jennamcfarlandlord.com
David Reiffel (Sound Design) David is pleased to be working at Gloucester Stage for the first time. His music and sound designs are widely heard on Boston stages including Apollinaire Theatre Company, Underground Railway Theater (IRNE nominee, Sound Design/Original Music for A Disappearing Number), Stoneham Theatre, New Repertory Theatre (IRNE nominee, Sound Design for Chesapeake), Actors Shakespeare Company, SpeakEasy Stage Company, The Boston Conservatory, Brandeis Theater Company, Zeitgeist Stage Company, Titanic Theatre Company, and Company One, and further afield at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (where he will create songs for a 1930s Hollywood Twelfth Night for the 2016 season) and Chicago’s Court Theatre. His musical The Rag Doll (book by Silvia Graziano) premiered at Blue Spruce Theatre (IRNE nominee, Best New Play), and he wrote lyrics for Cupcake (book: Bradley Seeman, music: Michael Wartofsky), produced in 2012 at Club Café. His musical Glory is presently in development at the New Opera and Musical Theater Initiative (NOMTI) Advanced Writers Lab. He wrote scores and designed sound for five years on the road as a founding member and resident composer with the nationally-acclaimed Cornerstone Theater Company. www.davidreiffel.com