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

[artwork by Benny Cadenas]

David and Bathsheba

A famous Old Testament incident lends the suspenseful backdrop for this new verse drama. King David of Israel, declining to join his troops in battle one year, has a brief affair with Bathsheba, wife of one of his best soldiers. On learning Bathsheba has become pregnant, David fears the impending discovery of their affair will put his crown at risk. His determination to cover up the liaison at any cost sets the play’s tragic events in motion and provides an incisive examination of the origins of evil.

There were 7 performances at American Theatre of Actors, Beckmann Stage, from November 3 to November 10, 2001.

The New York Theatre Experience lamented the too-short run of this play, and commended the Ensemble “for their commitment to uncompromising, challenging new work with real moral heft and significance.”

The Cast

Meredith Higbee
Paul Lewis-Ferguson
James Mack*
Antonio Macia
Barrett Ogden
Colby Trane
Joy Walton

The Crew
Director / Writer J. Scott Reynolds
Costumes Nancy Yam
Lighting Tamara Shelp

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.

Gearing Up for 2008/09

Thanks to our patrons for supporting Oedipus at Colonus, touted by NYTheatre.com as “another feather in Handcart’s cap as the city’s most reliable and interesting presenter of contemporary renditions of classic theatre texts.” Our one-night benefit performance of W.B. Yeats’s Purgatory was another success, its sell-out box office returns laying the groundwork for an ambitious 2008/09 season that will include Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood as you’ve never seen it before. Watch for more details on this thrillingly crafted production, arriving in New York after years of development and acclaim at international theater festivals…

Copyright © 2001 - 2008 Handcart Ensemble. Last updated January 20, 2007