Rainbow Kiss

March 12–April 13, 2008
ScotlandU.S. Premiere
Keith stakes his future on a one night stand with Shazza. He doesn’t fit her master plan, and yet she can’t stay away.
Meet the Artists

Simon Farquhar (Playwright) is from the northeast of Scotland and has lived in both London and Aberdeen.  A graduate of the University of Aberdeen, he wrote and performed in the drama group Centre Stage, and his early plays were staged at the Aberdeen Arts Centre.  He was commissioned by the BCC Radio 4 to write the radio script “Candy Floss Kisses.”  This was followed by his radio drama Elevenses with Twiggy, set during the dying days of the 60s and featuring a cameo performance by Twiggy herself.  Rainbow Kiss, his debut stage play, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in April 2006 as part of the 50th anniversary season.  In October 2006, he was invited to take part in the Old Vic 24 Hour Plays Celebrity Gala, for which he wrote a ten-minute play overnight -- Dream Me a Winter featuring Patricia Hodge.  In 2007 he wrote and presented the film documentary Razor Sharp: The Story of Peter McDougall

Will Frears was born and raised in North London, and has lived in the United States since 1990. A renowned director, scriptwriter and author, Mr. Frears had his professional debut in 2003 at the Actor’s Theater of Louisville, where he directed the Pulitzer Prize finalist, Omnium Gatherum. The play—about a post-9/11 dinner party—was praised by The New Yorker’s drama critic John Lahr, as “a wow beginning” for the young director. Since this production, Mr. Frears has gone on to direct a wide range of plays and films in theaters across the States. His most recent directorial project was the 2012 production of Build, an Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award-recipient, at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.

Mr. Frears has directed nearly two dozen plays since his debut at the Actor’s Theater, many of them acclaimed productions in premier Off Broadway theaters. Working in collaboration with some of contemporary theater’s most daring, well-regarded playwrights, Mr. Frears has directed productions of Year Zero (Second Stage Uptown), Still Life (MCC), Rainbow Kiss (The Play Company), The Water’s Edge (Second Stage), Pen (Playwrights Horizons, Terrorism (The New Group/The Play Company), Omnium Gatherum (Variety Arts), Where We’re Born and God Hates the Irish (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre), Get What You Need (Atlantic 453) and Kid-Simple (Summer Play Festival). Mr. Frears’ regional productions include Some Lovers at the Old Globe Theater, The Pillowman at George Street Playhouse, Hay Fever and The Price at Baltimore CenterStage, and Sleuth at the Bay Street Theater. Mr. Frears has also been a frequent participant in the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where he directed Romeo & Juliet, Bus Stop, The Water’s Edge and A Servant of Two Masters. He is a recipient of the Boris Sagal and Bill Foeller directing fellowships.

Will Frears has also directed several films, including Coach, Beloved and All Saint’s Day. (Winner, Best Narrative Short at the Savannah Film Festival). His films have screened at many Festivals, including Tribeca, Palm Springs, Morelia, Savannah, the Hamptons, Sarasota and Newport Beach.

Mr. Frears is a regular contributor to many periodicals, including The Paris Review, New York magazine, Harper’s, Town & Country, Eight by Eight, and The London Review of Books.

A proud high school drop-out, Mr. Frears went on to receive his undergraduate degree from Sarah Lawrence College, where he currently serves on the faculty. He received his MFA from the Yale School of Drama.

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and children.

Michael Cates (Actor) born and bred, Glasgow, Scotland. University of Glasgow, Arts and Law. Following a move to Chicago,he worked with local companies, including Steppenwolf, Court, Redmoon. Original founding ensemble member of PLASTICENE (Chicago, artisitic dir.,  Dexter Bullard), Blueman Group (Chicago, NYC), Kid Simple (NYC, dir. Will Frears).

Robert Hogan (Actor) Broadway: A Few Good Men, Hamlet. Off-Broadway: Accomplices (New Group), Boy (Primary Stages) What Didn’t Happen (Playwrights Horizons), Further Than the Furthest Thing (Manhattan Theatre Club), Never the Sinner  (Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actor), Rutherford and Son (Mint Theatre), On the Bum (Playwrights Horizons), Hope is the Thing With Feathers (Drama Dept.), Waiting for Lefty (Dir: Joanne Woodward), Romania, Kiss Me! (The Play Company). Film: Welcome to Academia (post-production), Universal Signs (p.p.) Borough of Kings, Michael Crighton’s Westworld, Hamburger, the Motion Picture. TV: HBO’s The Wire, Law and Order, L&O Criminal Intent, Deadline, Now and Again, Cosby, Cupid & Cate (Hallmark Hall of Fame), M*A*S*H and many other shows.

Charlotte Parry (Actor) Edward Albee’s Me, Myself and I at the McCarter Theater.  Work in America includes: Broadway: The Real Thing (Debbie) and Coram Boy (Young Thomas); Roundabout – Howard Katz; Sir Peter Hall Company – The Importance of Being Earnest (Cecily) and As You Like It (Phebe), both at the Ahmanson, BAM and London.  Regional: The Birthday Party (McCarter), The Turn of The Screw (Westport) and Cymbeline (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey).  Work in London includes: West End: The Real Thing.  Other London: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titus Andronicus, The Blue Room, Whistle Down The Wind, Follies.  Regional/Tours:  The Seagull, Three Sisters, Charley’s Aunt, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Amadeus, Northhanger Abbey.  Various TV/Film and Audiobooks in UK/USA.  AEA.

Peter Scanavino (Actor) Broadway: Shining City (MTC, dir. Robert Falls) Off Broadway: subUrbia (Second Stage, dir. Jo Bonney) Double Sophia, Urgent Fury (Cherry Lane Theater) The Moonlight Room (Worth Street, dir. Jeff Coen) as well as the NY Fringe Festival and various others. Regional: The Mark Taper Forum, The McCarter Theater, The Fairfield Theater Company. Film: “The Tourist”, “Dark Chamber” and the upcoming “The Informers”. Television: “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” and “Trial by Jury”, “Jonny Zero”, “Third Watch”, “The Bedford Diaries” and “Guiding Light”.

Thomas Lynch (Set Designer) Broadway: A Raisin in the Sun, Contact, The Music Man (Tony nomination), The Heidi Chroncles (Tony Nomination), Having Our Say, Ah, Wilderness!,  and Tintypes. Off-Broadway: See What I Wanna See (Public), Franks’s Home, Mme. Melville,  A Woman Before a Glass, (OBIE Award), Third, Laughing Wild, Adrift in Macao, Betty's Summer Vacation (OBIE Award), and Driving Miss Daisy.  Regional: Most recently Albee’s Me, Myself & I (McCarter). Designs for all major regional theatres and with directors including Emily Mann, Daniel Sullivan, Robert Falls, Richard Nelson, Stephen Wadsworth, and David Jones. Opera: Iphigenie en Tauride (Met), Rodelinda (Met), The Ring Cycle (Seattle),Alcina (Covent Garden), A Quiet Place (Vienna Staatsoper).

Charlie Corcoran (Set Designer) is an award-winning Scenic Designer whose work includes theater, opera, television, and film. He is the recipient of the Henry Hewes Design Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and A Lucille Lortel award nomination. He has designed at venues including The Irish Rep, Cherry Lane, Primary Stages, Juilliard, the Goodman Theatre, Center Theatre Group, McCarter Theater, Cleveland Playhouse, and Bucks County Playhouse. Tv credits include Project Runway, Frontal with Samantha Bee , Madame Secretary and The Equalizer.

Sarah Beers (Costume Designer) Theater: Associate Artist The Civilians: Canard Canard Goose, Gone Missing, Nobody’s Lunch, Paris Commune, The Great Immensity (dir: Steve Cosson), Anne Washburn's The Ladies (Dixon Place, dir.: Anne Kaufman). Spring Awakening Olney Theater, Bus Stop, The Great Immensity, (dir: Steve Cosson) Cabaret (dir: Eric Rosen ) Kansas City Repertory Theater. Women’s Project: Lisa D'amour's The Cataract (dir: Katie Pearl); Terrorism at The New Group/Play Company (dir: Will Frears). Labryinth Theater Company/ Public Theater: The Fairytale Project (dir: Jill DeArmon). St.Scarlet at W.E.T, by Julia Jordon (dir: Chris Messina), A.R. Gurney's O Jerusalem The Flea, (dir: Jim Simpson). Tape, by Stephen Belber Naked Angels (dir: Geoffry Nauffts). Film and TV: HBO's Maria Full of Grace, multi film collaboration with director Jay Craven’s Movies from Marlboro, Blindspot/ NBC, The Walking Dead: World Beyond/AMC, Emmy Award for History Channel series The Men Who Built America.

Tyler Micoleau (Lighting Designer) Originally from Maine, lighting designer Tyler Micoleau has lived in Brooklyn for the last 26 years. He has designed extensively throughout New York Off-Broadway, as well as regionally and internationally, for world premiere plays, musicals and operas as well as outdoor spaces and touring productions. He is the recipient of a Tony Award (for The Band’s Visit), two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Henry Hewes Design Awards, and two Village Voice OBIE awards.


Recent designs include Be More Chill on Broadway and London’s West End, the Public Theater / Disney musical Hercules in Central Park, Harvey Fierstein’s Bella Bella for Manhattan Theatre Club and the revival of Christopher Shinn’s Dying City at Second Stage Theater. Postponed or cancelled productions include David Mamet’s American Buffalo on Broadway, a remounting of Anne Baker’s The Antipodes in Los Angeles and the New York premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Becky Nurse of Salem for Lincoln Center Theater.

Drew Levy (Sound Designer) New York: Rock Doves (Irish Arts Center), Armed and Naked in America (Duke Theatre), Dutchman (Cherry Lane), Emergence-See! (Public Theatre), The Voyage of the Carcass (SoHo Playhouse), Sonia Flew and Training Wisteria (Summer Play Festival), The Mistakes Madeline Made (Naked Angels). Regional: Shipwrecked! (Long Wharf); Present Laughter, The Cherry Orchard, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Sisters Rosensweig, Burn This, and the world premiere of Sonia Flew (Huntington Theatre Company); The Corn is Green, Crimes of the Heart, Eurydice, The Chekhov Cycle, Ubu the King, King Stag, and Greylock Theatre Project (Williamstown Theatre Festival). Associate/Assistant credits: 39 Steps (American Airlines), Cymbeline (Lincoln Center), Apple Tree (Studio54), Adding Machine (Minetta Lane), Our Leading Lady (MTC), Macbeth (Public), and Dessa Rose (Lincoln Center). Drew received his MFA from Boston University.


Hondo Weiss-Richmond (Assistant Director) is a director and deviser with a focus on new work. He has directed or developed projects with the Ohio Theatre, Primary Stages, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Hunger and Thirst, Two Headed Rep, and Dutch Kills, among others. Hondo has assistant directed on and off Broadway, as well as regionally. His previous residencies and fellowships include the Drama League Directors Project, Playwrights Horizons, and Woolly Mammoth.

What begins with a kiss ends in blood. Set in Aberdeen, Scotland’s ‘Granite City,’ playwright Simon Farquhar paints a stark portrait of life and love on the dark side of the city’s oil-fueled boom.

Will Frears’ lively direction pulls out all the stops.”
–The New York Times

Deeply unsettling in its vivid portrait of pathological, obsessive love…
–New York Post

The characters’ financial and emotional plights are made all the more pitiable by their surprising and haunting eloquence…
–Backstage

Written by

Simon Farquhar

Directed by

Will Frears

Featuring

Michael Cates Robert Hogan Charlotte Parry Peter Scanavino

Set Design

Thomas Lynch

Costume Design

Sarah Beers

Lighting Design

Tyler Micoleau

Sound Design

Drew Levy

Production Stage Manager

Rachel E. Miller

Production Manager

R. Erin Craig/La Vie Productions

Venue

59E59 Theaters 59 East 59th Street New York, NY