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A Sign of the Times
A.R.T. presents Odets’ Paradise Lost
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The American Repertory Theater is continuing their festival, America: Boom, Bust and Baseball, with a production of Clifford Odets’ Depression Era classic Paradise Lost. Director Daniel Fish, whose work has been praised both locally and throughout the rest of the country, infuses the production with new life. Having taught at both the Yale School of Drama and Princeton University, Fish’s unique vision has brought fresh voice to many classics. With his production of Paradise Lost at A.R.T., Fish has lent a distinctive lens to this American theatre classic.
Paradise Lost focuses on the Gordon family, an upper-middle class clan whose personal financial well being is in the process of crumbling. We watch as the Great Depression lays claim to the family business and see as a family tries to grapple with the far-reaching consequences of this loss. Particularly poignant given America’s current financial distress, Paradise Lost is a poetic and personal examination of the effect that money (or its absence) can have on a family. In a larger sense it deals with the degree to which money is impingent upon our happiness and if the optimism that must necessarily crop up in order to get through such a catastrophe is an escapist delusion or an effective survival tool.
The play will run February 27–March 20, 2010 at the Loeb Drama Center (64 Brattle Street, Cambridge). Tickets can be purchased by phone at (617) 547-8300, online at www.AmericanRepertoryTheater.org, or in person at the A.R.T. box office.