Falstaff premiere kicks off theatre season

For its 2016-17 season, One Yellow Rabbit will present two world premières.

First up from Oct. 25 to Nov. 5 in the Arts Commons’ Big Secret Theatre will be John Murrell’s Fat Jack Falstaff’s Last Hour.

One Yellow Rabbit premièred Murrell’s last play Taking Shakespeare in 2012 featuring Murrell as a disgraced university professor and Denise Clarke as a most reluctant tutorial student.

This time around, Murrell zeros in on Shakespeare’s comic villain Sir John Falstaff, who first appeared in King Henry VI Part I and Part II. He was so popular a lout with Elizabethan audiences that Shakespeare gave Falstaff his own play The Merry Wives of Windsor.

In Fat Jack Falstaff’s Last Hour, the old reprobate is literally at Death’s door but he has grown so robust he can’t fit through. It is up to his landlady and her soldier husband to help him on his journey.

Murrell will play Falstaff with Denise Clarke and Andy Curtis as his co-stars. One Yellow Rabbit’s artistic director Blake Brooker will direct.

One Yellow Rabbit’s second première is Karen Hines’ All the Little Animals I Have Eaten, which Blake Brooker will direct as part of One Yellow Rabbit’s 2017 High Performance Rodeo in January.

Hines will explore a series of conversations between female professionals, friends and some rather unexpected visitors including ghosts and figments of the heroine’s imagination.

Denise Clarke will head an all-female cast.

Tickets are now on sale for both plays or as a package deal at oyr.org or by phone at 403-294-9494.