A well-to-do American Jewish family in 1939 Atlanta is preparing for the annual cotillion at their country club, while slowly awakening to what’s happening at the time in Europe besieged by Hitler’s armies. Loving, humorous, and poignant portrait of a family at a crossroads … winner of the Tony Award for Best Play in 1997.
As our second offering this season we bring to you Alfred Uhry’s The Last Night of Ballyhoo, a loving, humorous, and poignant portrait of a well-to-do Jewish family who find themselves at a crossroads in their lives. It’s December of 1939, Europe is under siege by Hitler’s armies, Gone with the Wind is about to premiere on the silver screen, but the biggest concern of the Freitag and Levy families in Atlanta, Georgia, is Ballyhoo, the lavish annual cotillion for the city’s Jewish socialites – and more precisely the choice of ball gowns, and the marriage prospects, for the family’s two young ladies set make their debuts. As the play unfolds, the author’s serious underlying message on social and political bias is enlivened by sparkling banter and comedic situations.
Uhry, born in 1936 into an upper middle class German-Jewish family in Atlanta, was inspired by childhood memories to compose ‘Ballyhoo’ in the early nineties as a series of vignettes on intra-ethnic prejudice within a setting very familiar to him. Having achieved world-class recognition with the production of his Pulitzer Prize winning Driving Miss Daisy in 1987, Uhry was approached by the Olympic Games’ Cultural Olympiad to compose The Last Night of Ballyhoo for the 1996 Olympics Games held in Atlanta that year. The play, well-received in Atlanta, was produced on Broadway in 1997, enjoying a run of 556 performances and winning the Tony Award for Best Play.
by Alfred Uhry
Directed by Loretta Lucy Miller and Marilyn Yoblick
Nov. 26,27,28 Dec 2,3,4,5,9,10,11,12
8130 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia PA 19118
Questions: 215.247.8881 • Reservations: 215.247.9913
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