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Rappacini’s Daughter and Bad Evidence: Two Plays by Terry Quinn

About the Show

Kings County Shakespeare Company presents Rappacini’s Daughter and Bad Evidence, an evening of one-acts by Terry Quinn, both directed by Deborah Wright Houston.

Rappacini’s Daughter is a verse adaptation by Terry Quinn of the famed short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Originally written as an operetic libretto, the text is being staged here as an experimental drama, accompanied by a cellist, a guitarist, three dancers and a soprano soloist. It takes place in Bergamo, Italy, where a botanist, Giacomo Rappacini, has armed his daughter, Beatrice, against the evils of the world by confining her in a garden and raising her among the perfumes of poisonous plants. Manipulated by Pietro Baglioni, a jealous professional rival of Rappacini, a vain and worldly suitor named Giovanni gains access to Beatrice and falls in love with her in the splendid, deadly garden. In time, Giovanni becomes inured to the plants’ toxins but becomes as poisonous as Beatrice. Unable to overcome his dismay at this, he lashes out at the young woman, and as the unwitting agent of Baglioni’s vendetta, kills her.

Bad Evidence is a dark drama of suspicion and entrapment which is played out in the coital rituals of a young, troubled married couple. The show is a contemporary play in which a young, attractive married couple is agonizing over suspicion of infidelity. The couple, talking in bed after hosting a party, become increasingly hostile in their language and actions. Sex for them becomes a slow, spider-like dance in which each tries to release inhibitions and tempt the other partner into humiliating confessions by the use of “bad evidence.”

Music for both productions is by Terry Quinn.

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