Masquerade
A Dress Up Farce
by Ludvig Holberg
adapted and directed by Preston Lane
June 5 – 26, 2011
Love's in disguise.
The hot new place to party is a masquerade where the young and hip go wild. Two fathers arrange the marriage of their children, but when the kids fall in love behind masks with someone they think they've never met, everything that can go wrong is almost certain to get even worse. Add in a mother who just wants to dance, faithful servants determined to protect young love and enough disguises to make your head spin. You'll laugh your mask off!
“One of the most riotous and ribald productions in this theatre company's history...A straight-up rave commemorating everything Triad Stage has accomplished in its decade of existence.”
–Lynn Jessup, Classical Voice of North Carolina
Read the full review
This production contains some adult language and situations.
Running time: 2 hours, including one fifteen-minute intermission.
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I just read in London’s Guardian that Norwegian Jon Fosse is the most produced playwright in Europe, but I’ve never seen one of his plays. United States theater goers have only a handful of translated classics that have found their way into our theaters’ regular repertoire. Is translation the only barrier keeping Fosse from crossing the Atlantic Ocean? What is it that denies us these wonderful plays?
But today, Triad Stage is proud to introduce one such playwright to our audiences.
Ludvig Holberg is one of the most influential writers that we have probably never heard of. He was a master of theatrical comedies, a philosophical genius as influential in his time as Votaire, and the namesake of the prestigious Holberg Prize. It’s a shame that he merits little more than a footnote in theater history textbooks.
He’s called the “Danish Molière”. And there is no doubt that Molière influenced him. But he is much more than a Scandinavian copy cat. His comic genius rings as true as any of the great masters of classic comedy. He greatly influenced Ibsen and countless other writers who followed him. He created characters and situations that still surprise and amuse.
From the first time I saw his name engraved along side Ibsen’s above the doors of Norway’s National Theater to my first exposure to a foreign language Masquerade that left me weak from laughing so hard to working for weeks with a Danish/English dictionary and the internet, making life out of words on a page, I have been – and remain – fascinated by Holberg.
I am delighted to share his work with you. I have endeavored to capture his spirit – if not his exact words – to bring his delicious comic confection to life here in the US. I hope you will enjoy meeting him and find pleasure in his story of love and disguise.
 Preston Lane |
