American Conservatory Theater Artistic Director Carey Perloff announced the casting for N. Richard Nash's classic western romance The Rainmaker. The show's cast, headed by American Conservatory Theatre core acting company member René Augesen and Canadian star Geordie Johnson and directed by the esteemed Mark Rucker, includes American Conservatory Theatre favorites, celebrated Bay Area actors, and a current American Conservatory Theatre Master of Fine Arts Program student.
The Rainmaker will play American Conservatory Theatre October 25 through November 25. Press night is Tuesday, October 30, at 8 p.m. The subject of the beloved 1956 film of the same name, starring Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn, The Rainmaker is a classic American romance about a drought, a con artist, a country girl, and the way that love can overcome cynicism in even the most tired of souls. When a charismatic huckster named Starbuck comes to the drought-stricken Curry farm, he promises to make it rain—for a price, of course.
But as Starbuck and Lizzie, the lone daughter of the family, discover a genuine chemistry, they begin to consider the possibility of a real miracle.
The Rainmaker is "a wonderful play to do, considering what's going on in the world today," said Perloff. "This play reminds us that just when the landscape seems totally wasted and desiccated, life springs back again." In a production director Rucker calls "a valentine to a sweeter time," The Rainmaker is far from a simple genre piece: "There is so much in the play that is real and specific and literal—and then as you step back farther there are these other aspects, there is a spectrum that leads us all the way to a fantastic yellow sky. Or to something beautiful and romantic and poetic. For us, it's been a wonderful journey trying to figure out how to embody these qualities of the play."
The cast of The Rainmaker features a mix of American Conservatory Theatre favorites and renowned actors. Having recently shared the stage in American Conservatory Theatre's production of Travesties (2006), American Conservatory Theatre core acting company member and associate artist René Augesen and Canadian star of stage and screen Geordie Johnson head the cast as Lizzie Curry and Bill Starbuck. Augesen, whose recent performances at American Conservatory Theatre include Happy End, Travesties, Luminescence Dating (at the Magic Theatre), the title character in Hedda Gabler, and, most recently, The Imaginary Invalid, has also played a number of distinguished roles in New York, regionally, and on the big and small screens.
Notable New York credits include Spinning into Butter (Lincoln Center Theater), Macbeth (with Alec Baldwin and Angela Bassett, Public Theater), It's My Party . . . (with F. Murray Abraham and Joyce Van Patten, Arc Light Theater), and Overruled (Drama League). In addition to directing and acting for television, Johnson has performed for nine seasons with the Stratford Festival of Canada, where his credits have included major roles in Troilus and Cressida, Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, The Cherry Orchard, Pride and Prejudice, Death of a Salesman, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Night of the Iguana, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
The remainder of the cast is made up of an exciting mix of American Conservatory Theatre core company members, familiar Bay Area actors, and a new face: third-year American Conservatory Theatre Master of Fine Arts Program student Alex Morf. A celebrated actor who has recently become an American Conservatory Theatre core acting company member, Jack Willis, playing H.C. Curry, Lizzie's father, has lately taken memorable turns on the American Conservatory Theatre stage as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Commissioner Brack in last season's Hedda Gabler. Willis has appeared on Broadway in Julius Caesar, The Crucible, Art, and The Old Neighborhood, and his TV and film credits include The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Cradle Will Rock, The Out-of-Towners, Love Hurts, I Come in Peace, Problem Child, Law & Order, Ed, and Dallas. Also a recent addition to American Conservatory Theatre's core acting company, Anthony Fusco appears in The Rainmaker as File, the sheriff's deputy vying with Starbuck for Lizzie's hand. A Bay Area treasure, Fusco's American Conservatory Theatre credits include major roles in The Imaginary Invalid, Hedda Gabler, and Travesties, and he has performed on Broadway in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and The Real Inspector Hound. Rod Gnapp, playing Sheriff Thomas, most recently appeared at American Conservatory Theatre in Happy End and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He has been acting in theaters around the Bay Area for the last 20 years.
Stephen Barker Turner—appearing as Lizzie's skeptical brother, Noah—is a frequent American Conservatory Theatre collaborator, most recently playing in last season's Luminescence Dating and Hedda Gabler. Turner is an associate artist at California Shakespeare Theater. Rounding out the cast as the easygoing Jim Curry is Alex Morf. A third-year student in American Conservatory Theatre's Master of Fine Arts Program, Morf, making his first appearance on the American Conservatory Theatre stage in a major role, received a 2006 Belle Foundation for Cultural Development grant and the 2007 Sadler Award.
Joining the design team for The Rainmaker are a number of artists returning to American Conservatory Theatre, as well as other highly regarded local talent. Scenic designer Robert Mark Morgan has designed The Dazzle and A Moon for the Misbegotten at American Conservatory Theatre, as well as productions of Major Barbara (Bay Area Theatre Critics' Circle Award for best set design of 2004) and Bad Dates for San Jose Repertory Theatre. For his set design for The Rainmaker, Morgan has been deeply inspired by depictions of the American West by artists such as Andrew Wyeth, Thomas Hart Benton, and Grant Wood. Costume designer Lydia Tanji, who designed the costumes for American Conservatory Theatre's world premiere production of Philip Kan Gotanda's After the War last season, was also inspired by the art the team studied, and has incorporated much of that aesthetic into her own designs. Tanji has received five Bay Area Theatre Critics' Circle Awards and two Drama-Logue Awards. In addition to numerous credits at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Tanji's work includes the films The Joy Luck Club, Hot Summer Winds, Dim Sum, Gotanda's The Wash, A Thousand Pieces of Gold, and Life Tastes Good. Don Darnutzer is lighting designer for the production. Darnutzer has designed the lighting for the Tony Award–nominated Broadway show It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues and the off-Broadway shows The Immigrant for Dodgers Stages and Lost Highway for Manhattan Ensemble Theatre. He has also designed the lighting for American Conservatory Theatre's The Dazzle and A Moon for the Misbegotten. In his 14th season as resident sound designer for San Jose Repertory Theatre, with more than 60 production credits, Jeff Mockus is sound designer for The Rainmaker. Among his recent work, Old Wicked Songs and Mary's Wedding earned Bay Area Theatre Critics' Circle Awards.
Director Mark Rucker has previously directed Luminescence Dating (at the Magic Theatre) and The Beard of Avon for American Conservatory Theatre He is an associate artist at South Coast Repertory Theatre, where he has directed more than 20 productions, including world premieres by Richard Greenberg, Christopher Shinn, Annie Weisman, and Culture Clash. Other regional theater credits include work at Yale Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage, Intiman Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Syracuse Stage, The Old Globe, Ford's Theatre, California Shakespeare Theater, and The Acting Company. Rucker's first feature film, Die, Mommie, Die!, won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
N. Richard Nash was born in 1913 on the rough south side of Philadelphia. Nash grew up on the streets and first worked as a ten-dollar-a-match boxer. He was also a good student, however, and, after graduating from South Philadelphia High School in 1930, he attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied English and philosophy. His first play, Parting at Imsdorf (1940), brought him some immediate success, earning him the Maxwell Anderson Verse Drama Award. His Broadway debut, The Second Best Bed (a comedy about Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, which he also directed), opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1946, followed by The Young and Fair in 1948.
His next play, See the Jaguar (in which James Dean made his Broadway debut, 1952), won the International Drama Award in Cannes and the Prague Award. Nash's greatest success and lasting fame were made with The Rainmaker, which opened on Broadway on October 28, 1954, starring Geraldine Page in the role of Lizzie Curry and Darren McGavin as Starbuck. Nash originally wrote the play as a television drama for the Philco Playhouse in tribute to his older sister, Mae, whom Nash described as "one of the left-out people." Despite his many plays, screenplays, and novels, The Rainmaker became Nash's signature piece, ensuring his place in American popular culture; Eva Marie Saint, Nancy Marchand, Tuesday Weld, Sally Field, and Jayne Atkinson are among the actors who have played Lizzie in subsequent productions. The script has been translated into 40 languages and was adapted (by Nash) in 1956 into a film starring Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster, as well as a musical, 110 in the Shade, which ran on Broadway for ten months in 1963 and was revived to acclaim in 2005 with Audra McDonald singing Lizzie's role. (Hepburn received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her performance in the film). Nash died in Manhattan on December 11, 2000, at the age of 87. Of The Rainmaker, ultimately his most memorable achievement, he said, "I tried to tell a simple story about droughts that happen to people, and about faith." -- www.act-sf.org
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