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Eileen Atkins as Maddy Rooney in Beckett's "All That Fall"

Eileen Atkins as Maddy Rooney in Beckett’s “All That Fall”

A phlegmatic, curmudgeonly old woman in a small Irish village some hundred years ago complains bitterly about the horribleness of life as she makes her way to the train station to meet her husband who is returning on the afternoon train. Along the way she meets other villagers: the dung monger, a buffoonish neighbor on a bicycle, a man in a motorcar with whom she had a flirtation ages ago, Miss Fitt whose name denotes her awkwardness, and the train station manager who has the unpleasant duty of telling her the train is delayed. Her husband arrives, not on time but soon enough, and together wife and husband walk slowly back to their house, stopping now and again to share a laugh and a cry.

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Bride5web

Some people will do anything for love.

Eileen stole a man’s wallet to pay for her ticket to London. Ali stole Eileen’s heart to repay his parents. Dov is a secret agent who poaches strangers’ secrets.

The English Bride, a new play by Lucile Lichtblau making its New York debut at 59E59 Theatre, is based on the true story of the “Hindawi affair,” a failed attempt to blow up an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv in 1986.  Nezar Hindawi, a Jordanian national, convinced his five-months-pregnant Irish girlfriend Anne-Marie Murphy to fly to Israel to meet his parents in preparation for their marriage. She didn’t know that he’d packed plastic explosive into the lining of her wedding dress.

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BY ELIZABETH SIMMONS

As a first time producer, David’s RedHaired Death comes with many challenges. Only two characters are on stage the entire play, time is non-linear, not to mention the mysterious male ensemble that could have anywhere from 2-10 members.

I knew I had to find another woman to co-produce and co-star who was up to the challenge, someone who I could share this wonderful show with. I found her in Diana Beshara, who co-founded One Old Crow Productions, a New York Innovative Theatre Award nominated company. After seeing their first production, Cowboy Mouth, I knew David’s RedHaired Death, which I’d been wanting to work on for eight years, was a good fit.

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