Charles Marowitz, founding artistic director of the Malibu Stage Company, has returned to the theater to direct Joe Orton’s black comedy, “Entertaining Mr. Sloane,” which opens Aug. 3.
Marowitz had a close association with playwright Joe Orton in the ’60s and directed the original West End production of Orton’s “Loot” which, after winning both the Evening Standard Award and Plays and Players Award for Best New Play, essentially launched Orton’s career in the U.K. In the late ’80s, then resident in California, Marowitz directed the West Coast premiere of “What The Butler Saw” at the L.A. Theater Center.
“It will be nostalgic,” Marowitz said, “to be directing again in the theater I designed and built in 1994 and working closely again with co-founder Jackie Bridgeman. A lot of water has passed under the bridge in the past four years but it has passed, and I’m looking forward to renewing old relationships. I am hoping to bring together a very strong company for the Orton piece and, because I knew him well all those years ago, am feeling rather paternal about the whole project.”
For his forthcoming production Marowitz has assembled an entire cast of British actors.
Heading the company is Caroline Langford. British-born, Langford immigrated to Israel in the late ’70s where she won the equivalent of an Israeli Oscar for her starring role in films such as “Smile, You’ve Been Told” and “The Delta Force.” On the New York stage, she starred in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and appeared in “The Rocky Horror Show.”
Nicolas Levene, undertaking the lead role of Sloane, was born in London and is a graduate of Oxford University where he was also active as a director. He trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While in the U.K., he appeared in lead roles at London’s Greenwich Playhouse (“The Master and Margarita”) as well as acting in 15 short films. He spent a year studying and performing in Russia at the St. Petersburg Theatre of Theatrical Art and the Maly Dramatic Theatre.
Mark Lindsay Chapman, born in south London, has appeared in a variety of films including “Titanic,” “Bram Stoker’s The Mummy” and “American Gothic.” His long list of television credits includes guest star appearances on “The Young and The Restless,” “Falcon Crest,” “Bay Watch” and “Poltergeist.” An alumnus of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played the lead role of Petruchio in “The Shrew,” directed by Marowitz, which won an L.A. Weekly Theatre Award.
The fourth member of the British cast is Clemont Von Franckenstein, born in Dunninghill, England. His long list of stage credits includes “Girl On The Via Flaminia” (with Sean Penn), the film, “The American President” and the musical, “The Madness of George ‘W,'” which ran for eight months in London’s West End. Franckenstein’s moniker is not an adopted stage name. In the l9th century, his great-grandfather was the Austrian ambassador to the Court of St. James. When Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley visited there, she appropriated the name “Franckenstein” (with the “c” deleted) for a short story, which was later expanded into the novel “Frankenstein” and subsequently generated a slew of Hollywood horror films.
The production of “Sloane” will be designed by John Iacovelli, an Emmy-award winning artist, who was nominated for a Tony for the Broadway revival of “Peter Pan.” He also designed “The Twilight of the Golds.” He is currently designing “The Book of Daniel” for Aidan Quinn for NBC Primetime.
Marowitz’s most recent production was “Silent Partners,” a free adaptation of Eric Bentley’s “The Brecht Memoir,” which premiered at the Scena Theatre in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, he was the first American director to be invited to work at the National Theatre of Prague in the Czech Republic where, in association with the author, he directed Vaclav Havel’s “Temptation.”
More information about tickets can be obtained by calling 310.589.1998.