The Sullivan Project: Take 2 with Donald Margulies and LONG LOST

Since 2013, Daniel Sullivan, the much-lauded director of plays like Proof, Rabbit Hole and Dinner with Friends, has curated a project within the University of Illinois' theater department -- Illinois Theatre -- to bring new, in-development works to Urbana. Sullivan holds the Swanlund Chair within the department, but it's his national resume that is impressive and deep, with honors ranging from induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2011 to a Drama Desk Award, two Lucille Lortel Awards, an Obie and an Outer Critics Circle Award. Three plays he's been associated with have won the Pulitzer Prize and he has been nominated for the Tony for Best Director six times, winning that award for Proof.

He has worked extensively with playwright Donald Margulies, directing Sight Unseen, Brooklyn Boy, Time Stands Still and The Country House on Broadway along with Dinner with Friends Off-Broadway at the Variety Arts Theatre. It should come as no surprise that this year's Sullivan Project put Daniel Sullivan back together with Donald Margulies, with a new family drama called Long Lost.

Like Lost Lake, a David Auburn play workshopped through the Sullivan Project in 2014, Long Lost* was still in development, with the playwright around to make changes and tweaks through the rehearsal process. Margulies first brought Long Lost, or at least the beginning of it, to the Ingram New Works Festival in Nashville last summer, with actor David Alford, a resident of Nashville, in the role of Billy, the ne'er-do-well brother whose arrival jumpstarts the action. Alford is a familiar face to fans of Nashville the TV show, where he played Bucky Dawes, the patient, much put-upon manager of country superstar Rayna Jaymes, played by Connie Britton.

The beauty of The Sullivan Project is the chance to see new scripts from America's best playwrights, as well as Equity actors at their top of their game. Alford's role as Billy was very different from Bucky, as you might imagine, and he was terrific, as was Kelly AuCoin, who played opposite him as David, the more successful brother, the one who is none too pleased when his bad penny of a sibling turns up. Kelly McAndrew and Michael Goldsmith completed the cast, playing David's wife and son, and they were also on target, even if their roles didn't feel quite as credible or as fully developed as the two brothers'.

McAndrew was part of this spring's Humana Festival of New American Plays as the title character in Brendan Pelsue's dystopic Wellesley Girl. She, too, played a starkly different character in that one. It's always fun to see such good actors show off their versatility.

Although I wasn't given any kind of order not to review Long Lost, I also wasn't invited to offer my thoughts, plus it's pretty clear that the whole point of this way-out-of-town try-out is to "help playwrights realize the creative impulse" with professional productions staged "away from the high-beam intensity of the big-city media machine," as producer Jeffrey Eric Jenkins' program notes put it. I am under no illusion that my blog possesses high beams or any sort of media machine, but still... I understand the need to let a play gestate without a lot of outside criticism. So the above comment about the fact that the wife and son seemed less credible is the extent of my critique.

Lost Lake went on to a New York production, and I'm guessing Long Lost has the same goal. Like the former play, this one has roles that should be catnip to mature actors. And even if Long Lost goes nowhere, The Sullivan Project is a worthy effort on its own, as a way to encourage and support new work that needs to get up on its feet before it can run. Kudos to Sullivan and Jenkins, who is the head of Illinois Theatre, for making it happen twice. Here's to the third iteration of The Sullivan Project, whenever that happens.

* If you've noticed, like I did, that the first two works in The Sullivan Project both have the word "lost" in their titles, then you also may be speculating on the next plays that would continue the string. Not with "lost" specifically, but with one-syllable, four-letter words beginning with L which flip from the first position to the second. After Long Lost, can we expect Life Long in 2018? And then Love Life in 2020. An then Last Love in 2022. That's where I run out of options, but if you have a four-letter L word that can go before Last, feel free to send it along. Of course, it may just be that "lost" is a prime target for drama, in which case my other L-words aren't going to work, anyway.

David Auburn's LOST LAKE Finds Itself in Manhattan Next Season

Last month, we saw the inaugural production of the "Sullivan Project," an initiative within the University of Illinois Department of Theatre to workshop new plays. The Sullivan in question is Daniel Sullivan, a prominent Broadway director who is also the Swanlund Endowed Chair and a professor of theatre at U of I. Sullivan's choice to start this project was Lost Lake, a new play by David Auburn, someone Sullivan had worked with before. Proof, also by Auburn, earned Sullivan a Tony as best director back in 2001.

Auburn was in Urbana in January to revise and rework his script as he saw how it played out with Sullivan at the helm and New York actors Jake Weber and Opal Alladin inhabiting the two characters in the play. Weber played Hogan, a scruffy man with a messy past and an even messier cabin, while Alladin was Veronica, a woman from the city who'd rented his cabin by a lake. How the two attempted to move forward through the murky waters in their lives formed the plot of the play. The result was an intriguing, if somewhat uneven Lost Lake, one with all kinds of promise, but some plot issues less than successfully resolved for me.

At the time, I thought that the role of manipulative, charming, infuriating Hogan would be catnip for actors of a certain age, while Veronica was less fully developed. Alladin looked beautiful and did great work with what she had, but there were some twists written into the script that just didn't work, and the balance between the characters was off. At a talkback after the performance I saw, Sullivan talked about how much Auburn had changed who this woman was and what her revelations were during the process, and it seemed clear that Lost Lake was still a work in progress.

The production certainly looked finished, however. Tucked inside the Studio Theatre at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Lost Lake had the benefit of a first-rate set, as scenic designer J. Michael Griggs established the rustic, mysterious lake cabin as a legitimate third character for Hogan and Veronica to play off.

I wondered where Lost Lake was headed after its Urbana workshop, and I asked that question during the talkback I attended. Sullivan indicated that it was very much up in the air, and that if it did move on to another production of some sort, he wasn't at all sure that he would be attached to it.

Was that just a case of hedging bets till plans were set? I don't know. But I do know that the New York Times reported last week that Lost Lake, with Sullivan at the helm, will be part of Manhattan Theatre Club's 2014-15 season. Sullivan will also direct The Country House, a new play by Donald Margulies that precedes Lost Lake on the schedule. In what is being called its world premiere, Lost Lake is set to begin previews at the New York City Center Stage on October 21 and open on November 11, 2014.

No word on whether Weber or Alladin will take on Hogan and Veronica again. I hope so. They braved Central Illinois in January and they ought to get something for their efforts!

THE SULLIVAN PROJECT Blends Daniel Sullivan, David Auburn and Jake Weber

Daniel Sullivan

Illinois Theatre, a producing arm of the University of Illinois Department of Theatre, is shedding some light on "The Sullivan Project," a theater event scheduled for a week of performances in early February.

The Department of Theatre at U of I had previously announced that this would be the inaugural year of the Sullivan Project, named for Daniel Sullivan, who is the Swanlund Endowed Chair and a Professor of Theatre at U of I Urbana-Champaign. He is also a one of New York's most in-demand directors, a Tony Award winner for his direction of Proof, by David Auburn, and a Tony nominee for directing plays like Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire, The Sisters Rosensweig by Wendy Wasserstein, and a 2011 production of The Merchant of Venice. Other than the fact that Sullivan would be at the helm, details were scant. All we knew was that this Sullivan Project would "gather professional artists from across the country to produce a new play."

Now we know that the new play in question is called Lost Lake and it was written by David Auburn. A press release sent out today tells us, "The latest work from the author of Proof, which received both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Broadway’s Tony Award, Lost Lake was developed by the author in a residency funded by Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference in the summer of 2013 (Preston Whiteway, Executive Director; Wendy C. Goldberg, Artistic Director).

"In Lost Lake, Veronica, who lives in New York City, finds herself at a crossroads in life and decides to offer her children a respite from city life in a ramshackle cabin far from the distractions of her urban milieu. When she leases a vacation home, she meets Hogan, the property owner who is facing challenges of his own—challenges that will have an impact on Veronica’s chances of time away from it all."

Jake Weber

We also have some excellent casting news. Jake Weber, someone I saw turn in a terrific performance in a terrific production of Tom Stoppard's Hapgood at the Williamstown Theater Festival last summer, who is perhaps better known for playing the hot husband in TV's Medium, will play Hogan, the challenged "property owner," while Opal Alladin will take the role of Veronica. Alladin appeared in the movie United 93 as well as an October episode of The Michael J. Fox Show, and she has extensive stage credits, including Romeo and Juliet for New York's Public Theater, Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia and Anne Marie Healy's What Once We Felt as part of a new play initiative from Lincoln Center.

Opal Alladin

Weber and Alladin share an Alan Ayckbourn connection, since she was in Ayckbourn's My Wonderful Day in Philadelphia, and he played all five Rivetti brothers in a Broadway production of A Small Family Business at the Music Box Theatre.

Scenic designer J. Michael Griggs joins costume designer James Berton Harris, a longtime U of I professor as well as a prominent costume designer with credits on both coasts, lighting designer Robert Perry and Bradford Chapin, a sound designer and audio engineer who has designed several productions with Illinois Theatre, on the design team.

Rehearsals begin next week in Urbana, with performances of Lost Lake scheduled for February 5-9 at 7:30 pm and 2 pm matinees on the 8th and 9th. For ticket information, click here.