Performances begin July 9 at Atlantic Stage 2 for Potomac Theatre Project's production of Tom Stoppard's Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth, which runs in repertory with Havel: The Passion Of Thought, an evening of three plays by Czech playwright and former President Vaclav Havel that are bookended by Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett shorts.
The production is presented by PTP/NYC, in association with Middlebury College, and is scheduled to run Off-Broadway through August 4. Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth is directed by PTP Co-Artistic Director Cheryl Faraone, and Havel: The Passion of Thought (beginning July 10), is directed by Co-Artistic Director Richard Romagnoli.
In Dogg’s Hamlet, linguistic mismatches tumble into a performance of Hamlet; in Cahoot’s Macbeth, a forbidden living-room production of Shakespeare’s play parallels Macbeth’s usurpation of the Scottish throne before Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia.
The cast is made up of Matthew Ball, Denise Cormier, Tara Giordano, Christo Grabowski, Christopher Marshall, Peter B. Schmitz, Lucy Van Atta, Olivia Christie, Will Koch, Emily Ma, Katie Marshall, Madeleine Russell, Lior Selve, Zach Varicchione, and Connor Wright.
Havel: The Passion of Thought showcases three plays by Havel: In Audience, Private View, and Protest, all banned in Czechoslovakia but frequently performed in living rooms or recorded and distributed on vinyl. The trio of shorts is bookended by Pinter’s New World Order and Beckett’s Catastrophe, which was written in tribute to Havel.
The cast is made up of David Barlow, Emily Kron, Michael Laurence, Marshall, Danielle Skraastad, Emily Ballou, and Madeline Ciocci.
The production team includes Mark Evancho (set design), Hallie Zieselman (lighting design), Chris Romagnoli (costume design Dogg’s Hamlet), Rebecca LaFon (costume design Cahoot’s Macbeth), Glenna Ryer (costume design Havel), Sam Tompkins Martin (props design), Peter B. Schmitz, and Adam Milano (movement), Alex Williamson (production stage manager), and Devin Wein (production stage manager Havel).
