GableStage











Presents











OLD

WICKED

SONGS

By Jon Marans
January 13th – February 4th, 2024
Preview performance: Friday, January 12th

Non-profit Production Partner: Legal Services of Greater Miami

Sponsored by
Knight Foundation
Funding Arts Network  
The Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies
at the University of Miami
Carolyn & Michael Friedman  
Nedra & Mark Oren
Ezra & Tati Katz
 
A Miami Premiere
Presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc., New York.
 
Run time: 2 hours with a 15-minute intermission.

“Marans’ writing explores the human heart with a mixture of simplicity and virtuosity” – The New York Post

In 1986 Vienna, a young Jewish pianist arrives to study; but before he begins his piano instruction, he must first take singing lessons from the harsh, anti-semitic Professor Mashkan. As the play unfolds through the poetry of Heinrich Heine and the music of Robert Schumann, secrets are revealed, and these two men from different generations find they have much more in common than they think. Directed by playwright Jon Marans, this 1996 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize is a play with music that stars two actors who are classically trained pianists. Sponsored by Funding Arts Network. 

 

Cast

Keith Baker

Professor Josef Mashkan

A graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse and Julliard, Keith has recently played the role of Jeeves in By Jeeves by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn at the Goodspeed Opera House. He won the Broadway World Award for Best Actor in a drama, Old Wicked Songs, at Bristol Riverside Theatre and has been twice the recipient of the South Florida Carbonell Awards for Best Actor in a musical. In numerous regional theaters, he has directed and acted in over 150 productions in a career of more than fifty years. Favorite roles have been James Tyrone in A Moon For The Misbegotten, William O. Douglas in Mountain, Henry Drummond in Inherit The Wind and Pangloss in the musical Candide. Keith has been the Artistic Director of three successful regional theaters and the creator of the great American Christmas Songbook for over thirty years. He dedicates this performance to his wife, Jo, and his newfound brothers Marke and Sean.

Photo: Meera Mohan

Teddy Warren

Stephen Hoffman

Teddy Warren is a proud Equity actor and stands with the thousands of actors and writers currently on strike to receive fair pay for their work. What we make onstage, onscreen, or on paper is a product to which we’ve devoted our lives. A fourth-generation actor originally from Milwaukee, WI; Teddy received his BFA in Theatre Studies from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. Most recently, Teddy has been in Bright Star at Actors’ Playhouse and Kitty Hawk with the Adrienne Arsht Center. He’s excited to make his GableStage debut in Old Wicked Songs. Special thanks to his two-year-old daughter for “helping” him practice the songs for this show at home. If you’d like to learn more about Teddy and the projects he’s worked on you can visit www.TeddyWarren.com. 

Photo: Meera Mohan

Photo: B. Hargrove.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT & DIRECTOR

Jon Marans

Jon Marans is a playwright, librettist, lyricist and story editor. His play Old Wicked Songs was a Pulitzer Prize and Drama League Finalist. It was first presented by the Walnut Street Theatre before moving to New York, where it ran for a full season. In England, Old Wicked Songs started at the Bristol Old Vic, before transferring to London’s West End at the Gielgud Theater starring Bob Hoskins and James Callis. The play has been produced throughout the U.S. and has been translated and produced in over a dozen countries. For Michael Douglas’s Stonebridge Productions, Jon was a story editor and for the New Carol Burnett Show, he was a writer/lyricist. Mr. Marans is a graduate of Duke University in mathematics with a minor in music. His play The Temperamentals, ran for eight months off-Broadway and is in film development. Mr. Marans is a recipient of a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship.

GableStage is proud to announce its non-profit partnership for the production of Old Wicked Songs

"To advance economic opportunity and social justice for our community through effective legal advocacy"

To become a non-profit production partner please email tpalmer@gablestage.org