Patrice Shields Florida Weekly October 2017
The Naples Players (TNP) announce they have added additional performance dates to the run of their current production Maple & Vine. Due to the popularity of the show, tickets for performances of the original run through November 19 are sold out. Four additional shows have been added, extending performances through November 26, offering visitors and residents the opportunity to enjoy the show through Thanksgiving weekend.
“We are thrilled by our community’s overwhelming response to this production,” said Bryce Alexander, Artistic Director of The Naples Players and Director of Maple & Vine. “The play isn’t about picking a side, a decade, or a generation – it is about choosing now.”
Maple & Vine is written by Jordan Harrison whose play Marjorie Prime, was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, with a film adaptation, directed by Michael Almereyda, that premiered in the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and is receiving critical praise as a sci-fi exploration of our inner lives. Maple and Vine premiered in the 2011 Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville and went on to productions at American Conservatory Theatre and Playwrights Horizons.
Maple & Vine explores the lives of a young and successful, but stressed out New York couple, Katha (Tina Moroni) and Ryu (Dan Bacalzo), who feel like prisoners in their perfectly imperfect 21st-century lives. After they meet Dean (Jesse Hughes), a charismatic man from a community of 1950s re-enactors, they forsake cell phones and sushi for cigarettes and Tupperware parties and surprise themselves by what they are willing to sacrifice for happiness.
While you will be swept away by the nostalgic beauty of Maple & Vine’s 1950’s era costumes, Harrison never lets you forget that the grass is not always greener on the other side of that vintage Cadillac Eldorado. Ryu’s career as a plastic surgeon is replaced by a monotonous post war factory job and Katha’s world is no longer constricted by packed schedules but is instead confined to the home, where having dinner ready for her husband is the focus of her day. While the limitations imposed by 1950’s culture provide simplicity and order to this couple’s out of control life, humans are anything but simple and divergence from the cultural norms of this group, including their interracial marriage, can prove as isolating as their fast-paced, over-structured lives.
Extended performances are Tuesday, November 21 at 7:30pm; Friday and Saturday, November 24 and 25 at 8:00pm and Sunday, November 26 at 2:00pm in the newly renovated Tobye Studio. Tickets are $40 for adults, $35 for subscribers and $10 for students and educators. For tickets and more information visit www.naplesplayers.org or call (239) 263-7990. Upcoming holiday shows include Meredith Willson’s family friendly musical Miracle on 34th Street, November 29-December 23 in Blackburn Hall and Elf The Musical Jr., November 2-11 in Blackburn Hall. The Naples Players’ offer a season full of great shows and theatre classes for adults and youth.