SEASON 15 | OCTOBER 2002

Early Morning

By Edward Bond
Directed by Barry Pineo
Presented by VORTEX

What if Queen Victoria was a lesbian? What if she was having an affair with Florence Nightingale? What if she had only two sons, George and Arthur, who were joined at the hip? What if her beloved Prince Consort, Albert, and her trusted Prime Minister, Disraeli, were plotting her overthrow while, at the same time, plotting to overthrow each other? What if Heaven was a place where everyone was happy, where you were reunited with lost loved ones, and where there was plenty to eat... as long as you didn’t mind eating each other? What if nothing was as it seems, if the truth were hidden, if what we perceive as the only way to live was only a system imposed by power hungry politicians intent on either controlling human lives or, if they won’t be controlled, taking them?

Edward Bond’s pitch black comedy Early Morning was written in 1968 and is more relevant now than then. While Bond was parodying the Age of British Empire, his themes, which touch on violence, consumerism, and the truth that lies behind the façade of western culture, strongly resonate today in this, the age of American Empire. Its original production led to the abolishment of the Lord Chamberlain’s office, which had been monitoring and censoring politically objectionable material on the English stage for hundreds of years. Warning: Multiple lynched bodies, gallows humor, and consumption of a myriad of human limbs (but all in good fun).

CAST

Steven Fay, Courtney Hopkin, Ellen Kolstö, Matthew Patterson, David Saldaña, Stephanie Swenson, Clay Towery, J. Conor Brooke, Henry V. Fitzgerald, Jr., Charles Hobby, Taylor Maddux, Gareth Maguire, Josh Meyer, Brandon Salinas, and Ryan Sullivan

PRODUCTION TEAM

Directed by Barry Pineo. Written by Edward Bond. Set Design by Ann Marie Gordon. Costume Design by Kari Perkins. Lighting Design by Jason Amato and Brian Davis. Sound Design by David Saldaña.