Five one-act plays by Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Tony Kushner will be staged at the Tricycle theatre in September under the banner Tiny Kushner.
The collection of plays, produced by the Guthrie Theater and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, is performed by an all-American cast who take on multiple roles.
Kushner’s five plays tackle subjects as varied as a bizarre lunar encounter (Flip Flop Fly!), former First Lady Laura Bush reading stories to dead Iraqi children (Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy) and an outrageous 1990s scheme to avoid paying taxes (East Coast Ode To Howard Jarvis: A Little Teleplay In Tiny Monologues). The snappily-titled Terminating Or Sonnet LXXV Or ‘Lass Meine Schmerzen Nicht Verloren Sein’ Or Ambivalence centres on an analyst, her former patient and their lovers, while Dr. Arnold A. Hutschnecker In Paradise is set in an upscale office in heaven where Dr Hutschnecker is receiving supervision from an angel.
Kushner is a multi-award-winning playwright whose work includes the epic Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels In America, as well as A Bright Room Called Day, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide To Capitalism And Socialism With A Key To The Scriptures, and Slavs! He also wrote the book and lyrics for the musical Caroline, Or Change, which played at the National Theatre in 2006, winning the 2007 Best New Musical Laurence Olivier Award.
The production is directed by Tony Taccone, the Artistic Director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, who has frequently worked with Kushner and commissioned Angels In America.
Tiny Kushner plays at the Tricycle from 1 to 25 September (press night 3 September). It follows two other multi-play seasons: Women, Power And Politics, which runs from 5 June to 17 July, and the return of The Great Game: Afghanistan from 23 July to 29 August.
CB