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A Minister's Wife
Based on the play Candida by George Bernard Shaw
Music by Joshua Schmidt, lyrics by Jan Levy Tranen, and book by Austin Pendleton
Directed by Michael McKelvey
Featuring Jill Blackwood, Andrew Cannata, Amy Downing, Greg Holt and Nathan Jerkins
March 28 - April 14, 2013
The award-winning composers of Adding Machine have teamed up again in this musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s classic play, Candida, about the self-assured sermonizer Reverend James Morell. Morell has it all – the respect of his peers, satisfaction in his divine calling and an enviable home life with his beautiful wife, Candida – until the young poet Marchbanks arrives and declares his love for Candida. Filled with lush melodies, sharp bouts of intellectual dueling and intimate emotional revelations, A Minister’s Wife challenges our assumptions about strength, love and marriage.
Penfold’s production is the first since A Minister’s Wife received its praised New York debut in April 2011. The Wall Street Journal called it “the most important new musical since The Light in the Piazza.” The Austin staging brings back director Michael McKelvey, whose past Penfold collaborations The Last 5 Years, John & Jen and I Love You Because received accolades from the Austin Critics Table and B. Iden Payne Awards.
Click the image below to see photos of the show by Kimberley Mead:
"Stellar performances... This uncommonly beautiful new musical represents everything great about Austin theatre. Audiences won't be able to help themselves from loving A Minister's Wife."
-The Austin Chronicle
"A delicate, understated, and exceedingly beautiful piece with a score that is daring, challenging, dissonant, and astonishingly successful at pushing the musical genre into new territory."
-Broadway World Austin
"The quality of the music is excellent."
-Austin American-Statesman
"The most important new musical since The Light in the Piazza. To say that you mustn't miss it is to grossly understate the case."
-The Wall Street Journal
