Theater News

Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique Announces Final Extension

The 20th-anniversary revival runs at HERE.

Bethany Rickwald
Off-Broadway
A scene from Symphonie Fantastique, created, designed, and directed by Basil Twist, at HERE.
A scene from Symphonie Fantastique, created, designed, and directed by Basil Twist, at HERE.
(© Richard Termine)

Performer and puppeteer Basil Twist's acclaimed Symphonie Fantastique will extend one final time to September 2. At closing, the 20th-anniversary engagement will have played six previews and 153 regular performances at HERE.

Dream Music Puppetry Program's production of Symphonie Fantastique returns to its original home at HERE, where the groundbreaking work first premiered in 1998, to celebrate the theater's 25th anniversary season. The show takes place in a 1,000-gallon water tank, in which five unseen puppeteers swirl countless pieces of fabrics, feathers, fishing lures, flashlights, glitter, dyes, plastic, vinyl, and bubbles in all shapes and sizes, creating a dreamlike world of imagination and surrealistic storytelling.

Symphonie Fantastique is set to the 1830 score by composer Hector Berlioz, and this engagement marks the first time in New York City that the work has been performed to live piano accompaniment, using the Franz Liszt piano transcription. On piano is Christopher O'Riley, who has been a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony.