Handcart Ensemble

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Paul Muldoon on Handcart’s The Burial at Thebes

“I simply can’t imagine a better production of The Burial at Thebes. Handcart Ensemble is a spectacularly gifted group, absolutely equal to the subtleties of Heaney’s text. I’ll go anywhere to see anything they do.” —Paul Muldoon

Alcestis

A version of Euripides' Alcestis

by Ted Hughes

In the final year of his life, the poet Ted Hughes turned to an unclassifiable, half-tragic/half-comedic play by Euripides about King Admetos, who escaped death by allowing his wife to voluntarily die in his place. The resulting adaptation, with its sharpened imagery and an exhilarating re-enactment of the Herculean Twelve Labors, is a masterpiece of wit and raw, penetrating dialogue.

Schedule

There were 12 performances from April 19 to May 5, 2007, at The Salvation Army's THEATRE 315 on West 47th Street.

Cast

Steve Abbruscato*
Ron Bopst*
David D'Agostini*
Matthew Herrick*
Kevin Lapin
Robert Mobley*
Nicholas Alexiy Moran*
Jane Pejtersen*
Laurie Schroeder*

Director J. Scott Reynolds
Original Score Nathan Bowen
Choreography Andrea Homer-Macdonald
Costume Designer Jessa-Raye Court
Lighting Designer David Kniep
Stage Manager Valerie Best


(This page is a summary of a past production. The full Alcestis page as it existed during the run of this show, with calendar, podcast and images, can be found here.)

About Us

Old Wine in New Bottles

Handcart Ensemble produces new adaptations, new translations, and new works for the theater, drawing primarily from classical sources. Read our mission statement for more information.

Handcart's Horizon

Watch here for details on productions planned for the coming year and seasons, which include a reading of Racine's Iphigenia in a glorious new translation by poet Rachel Hadas, a full production of Homer's Odyssey as adapted by poet Simon Armitage, and a startlingly orginal version of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood (for which a teaser will appear in our December benefit of A Child's Christmas in Wales: Stories and Poems by Dylan Thomas); all from a company described as "the city’s most reliable and interesting presenter of contemporary renditions of classic theatre texts (NYTheatre.com)."

Copyright © 2001 - 2011 Handcart Ensemble. Last updated January 2, 2011