Falls and Tarver to Direct Dennehy in Stratford Double Bill

Robert Falls and Jennifer Tarver will direct a double bill of one-act plays to be performed by Brian Dennehy at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, June 18-August 31, with an opening set for June 28.

Falls will direct Eugene O’Neill’s Hughie, about a small-time Broadway gambler who regales the weary night clerk (played by Joe Grifasi) of a run-down hotel with self-aggrandizing yarns of booze, broads and big wins. Tarver will direct Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, about a 69-year-old man who listens to a tape he made 30 years earlier assessing his life thus far. The plays were previously to have been directed by Don Shipley, who resigned from his position as Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s co-artistic director last month.

Falls is the artistic director of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. He previously directed Dennehy on numerous productions, including the Broadway revivals of Death of a Salesman and Long Day’s Journey into Night, winning a Tony Award for the former and a Drama Desk for the latter. Additional Broadway credits include Talk Radio, Shining City, and Aida.

Tarver is the recipient of the 2006 Pauline McGibbon Award and the 2002 John Hirsch Directors Award. Recent directing credits include Thom Pain (based on nothing) and Crave, for which she received a Dora nomination for best director. She was also Dora-nominated for That Time – Five Beckett Shorts in 2006.

Dennehy will also be appearing in the Stratford production of All’s Well That Ends Well, as the King of France. Laurence Boswell will direct. Additional shows in Stratford’s 2008 repertory season include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Caesar and Cleopatra, The Music Man, Cabaret, Emilia Galotti, The Trojan Women, Love’s Labour’s Lost, There Reigns Love, Palmer Park, Moby Dick and Shakespeare’s Universe (Her Infinite Variety).

For more information, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.