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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
There is summer theatre in
Boston. And then there is A Clockwork Orange.
Company
One, winner of the 2004 Elliot Norton Award for Best Local
Fringe Production, launches its sixth season this July with
the Boston premiere of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork
Orange. A wild mix of theatre, film, and rock ‘n
roll, A Clockwork Orange redefines the classic
story with direction from Company One and original music from
The Dresden Dolls.
A Clockwork Orange, adapted by
Burgess for London’s Royal Shakespeare Company in 1990, is the
infamous coming-of-age story of Alex and his gang of “droogs,”
who tear through adolescence fueled on spiked milk cocktails,
classical music, and violent crime sprees. This version
includes the controversial ending that was cut from the
original American edition of the book.
It is everything devotees of
the cult classic know: the “ultraviolence,” “the old in-out,”
and “lovely Ludwig Van.”
But this production of A Clockwork Orange
is a new cult classic in the making, with a cast including
Boston’s most dynamic young actors, and an original score by
Boston’s most notorious band.
“This is a classic piece, adapted by Burgess
himself, and it’s very rarely produced onstage,’’ says Shawn
LaCount, the Artistic Director of Company One. “But the topics
it deals with—politics, and religion, and youth—are timeless,
and this production will introduce a tale of post-industrial
alienation to a new generation.”
LaCount and co-director Mark Abby VanDerzee felt
that The Dresden Dolls—the winners of last year’s WBCN “Battle
of the Bands,” and named among the best groups in Boston by
Boston Magazine and the Boston Phoenix¾
could provide an appropriately propagandist sound for Company
One’s version.
“They’re perfect,” LaCount
says. “The piano and drum has this eerie, raw sound. And lead
singer and pianist Amanda Palmer is well-versed in her
Beethoven, and knows the Fifth by heart.”
The result of this
collaboration is A Clockwork Orange:
frightening, entrancing, and compelling.
Company One closed its fifth
season last spring with Lost City, the group’s first
original production, and received critical acclaim for its
production of Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, and its
inaugural Boston Fringe festival. This season,
beginning with A Clockwork Orange, marks the
start of Company One’s residency at the Boston Center for the
Arts, and promises to be the most exciting to date.
Over the past five years,
Company One has worked to redefine the arts in Boston by
working with diverse young actors, choosing provocative plays,
and premiering original work. A Clockwork Orange,
drawing on the power of a classic and the energy of the city’s
most unorthodox artists, continues to broaden the boundaries
of Boston’s fringe theatre.
Anthony
Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange
will be at the Boston Center for the Arts from July 22 to
August 14.
For
more information, please contact Mason Sand at 617-277-7032
ext. *834 |
