Dark of the Moon

Phare Play Productions continues its inaugural season with its production of Howard Richardson and William Berney’s Dark of the Moon. A modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet, the play takes place in the mountains of North Carolina in the early 1920’s within a tight knit community that strongly values religion, music, and hard work. A witch boy named John falls in love with the headstrong Barbara Allen, and begs Conjur Man to make him human so he can pursue her. If Barbara stays faithful for one year, John can remain in her human world. But as strange occurrences begin in Buck Creek, the townspeople search for why their community is being disrupted and will do whatever it takes to return to their comfortable ways.

“The kind of play the audience instantly likes.” — N.Y. Times

“Ardor and confession work up with hymms to a religious frenzy, cleverly preserving individual characters… The American authors give us an astonishing play, a fearsome legend.” — London Daily Herald

“A show of magical appeal.” — N.Y. Herald Tribune

“A powerful fantasy in a setting of the Smoky Mountains. It achieves that rare combination of being spectacular and at the same time intimate and intense.”
— Players Magazine