Phaedra x 3

From the classic to the post-modern, the elegant to the raunchy, One Year Lease presents three shows in repertory:

Jean Racine’s Phedre translated by Ted Hughes
Tuesdays and Fridays @ 7pm
In the most classic version of Phaedra in the series, Ted Hughes follows the story of the Phaedra and her insatiable desire for her stepson Hippolytus, the bastard child of her husband and his former mistress. Translated from Racine’s 17th Century French verse, Phedre explores the disastrous consequences of forbidden love in a world where desire is a plaything of the gods. This struggle of power versus desire erupts in a frenzy of obsession, admission, guilt, and ruin.

Matthew Maguire’s Phaedra
Wednesdays @ 7pm, Saturdays @ 2pm
Corruption, privilege, money, and power reign supreme in Matthew Maguire’s take on the ancient myth of Phaedra. In place of Phaedra and her husband King Theseus, we find Faye and her husband Thomas, the head of the most powerful multinational corporation in the country whose ambition is as ruthless as his lust. Cross Dynasty, film noir, and a dose of good ole’ fashioned Greek tragedy and you’ll experience Matthew Maguire’s tale of doomed love.

Matthew Maguire won an OBIE for his work in I Don’t Know Who He Was and I Don’t Know What He Said, a one-man play written and directed by Mac Wellman. As a playwright, his other works include The Tower and The Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo.

Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love
Thursdays and Saturdays at 7pm
In Phaedra’s Love, playwright Sarah Kane imagines a world where excess, lust and violence rule. Though Kane’s Hippolytus is a bored, promiscuous, slob who has already slept with her daughter, Phaedra’s passion remains undaunted. In a play where Ubu Roi meets Quentin Tarantino, the fumblings of this doomed family are as comedic as they are violent. Kane skewers the royal family, the Church, and the breakdown of the family as she takes us to the myth’s final bloody conclusion.

Kane’s shocking career, which includes Blasted, Cleansed, Crave, 4.48 Psychosis (which just ended a run at BAM), was cut short when she committed suicide in 1999 at the age of 28.