The Whale
- Written by Samuel D. Hunter
- Directed by Davis McCallum
Samuel D. Hunter’s (Playwright) plays include The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play) and A Bright New Boise (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), and his newest plays include The Few, A Great Wilderness, Rest, and Pocatello. He is the recipient of a 2014 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, a 2012 Whiting Writers Award, the 2013 Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, the 2011 Sky Cooper Prize, and the 2008 PONY/Lark Fellowship. His plays have been produced in New York at Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Clubbed Thumb and Page 73, and around the country at such theaters as Seattle Rep, Victory Gardens, South Coast Rep, Williamstown Theater Festival, The Old Globe, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Company, Marin Theater Company, and elsewhere. His work has been developed at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, Seven Devils, and PlayPenn. A published anthology of his work, including The Whale and A Bright New Boise, is available from TCG books. He is a member of New Dramatists, an Ensemble Playwright at Victory Gardens, a member of Partial Comfort Productions, and was a 2013 Resident Playwright at Arena Stage. A native of northern Idaho, Sam lives in NYC. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, The Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Juilliard.
Photo by Zack DeZon
Davis McCallum (Director) directed the award-winning New York premiere of Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale at Playwrights Horizons (Callaway Award nomination). Other recent productions include London Wall (Mint Theater Company), Henry IV (Pearl Theatre Company), Quiara Alegria Hudes’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Water By the Spoonful (Second Stage, Hartford Stage Company), Gabriel Kahane and Seth Bockley’s February House (The Public); Samuel D. Hunter’s A Bright New Boise (Partial Comfort, Drama Desk nomination) and Five Genocides (Clubbed Thumb); Michael Mitnick’s Sex Lives of Our Parents (Second Stage); Gregory S. Moss’s punkplay (Clubbed Thumb); Charles Mee’s Queens Boulevard (Signature Theater); Hudes’s Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue (P73, Pulitzer Prize finalist); Henry V (New Victory); Jane Eyre, The Tempest and The Turn Of The Screw (The Acting Company). Regional: The Guthrie, The Old Globe, Humana, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Williamstown, Alliance Theater Company, Chautauqua Theater Company, the O’Neill, Playmakers Rep, Two River, New York Stage & Film, others. Other: Drama League Fellowship (2001), Phil Killian Fellowship (2003), NEA/TCG Career Development Program (2007), Boris Sagal Fellowship (2010), Princess Grace Honoree (2011). He has taught directing at Princeton University and the New School for Drama. He trained at LAMDA and studied at Princeton and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the Artistic Director of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (www.hvshakespeare.org).
Photo by Zack DeZon
Tues—Fri at 7:30, Sat at 2 & 7:30, Sun at 2 & 7 Additional matinee Wed Nov 21 at 2
On the outskirts of Mormon Country, Idaho, a six hundred pound recluse hides away in his apartment eating himself to death. Desperate to reconnect with his long-estranged daughter, he reaches out to her, only to find a viciously sharp-tongued and wildly unhappy teen. Big-hearted and fiercely funny, The Whale tells the story of a man's last chance at redemption, and of finding beauty in the most unexpected places.
Featuring
Cassie Beck
Liz (through 11/25/12)
Reyna de Courcy
Ellie
Rebecca Henderson
Liz (from 11/27/12)
Shuler Hensley
Charlie
Tasha Lawrence
Mary
Cory Michael Smith
Elder Thomas
Playwrights Horizons: The Whale, Prayer for My Enemy, The Drunken City (Theatre World Award). Broadway: The Humans (Drama Desk Award, also Off-Broadway and National Tour), Picnic, The Norman Conquests. Other Off-Broadway: By the Water, Happy Hour, Smudge, Oohrah!. Television: “The Accidental Wolf,” “Shameless,” “Chicago Med,” “The Strange Ones,” “Elementary,” “Almost There.”
Theater: Burning (New Group), Civilization (All You Can Eat) (Clubbed Thumb), Orange, Hat & Grace (Soho Rep), Snow Day (Drama League); Dreams of the Washer King (Playwrights Realm), Monstrosity (13P), Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom (Humana Festival). Television/Film: “Law & Order: SVU,” “Blue Bloods,” “Bored to Death,” “Army Wives,” Beach Pillows, Girls Against Boys, Coming Up Roses, The Bounty Hunter, Asbury Park, Mister Green. (As of October 2012)
Playwrights Horizons: The Whale, The Retributionists. Other Off-Broadway: Too Much, Too Much, Too Many (Roundabout); Red-Handed Otter (Cherry Lane); The Collection/A Kind of Alaska (Atlantic); Canary (Rattlestick); Three Sisters, The Misanthrope, Scapin (Classic Stage Company), Baby Face (Soho Rep). Other New York: Roadkill Confidential (Clubbed Thumb), Spin (StageFARM). Film/Television: True Story, “The Good Wife.”
Broadway: Jud Fry in Oklahoma! (also at The National Theatre and London’s West End; Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Olivier Awards), The Monster in Young Frankenstein (also National Tour), Kerchak in Tarzan, Javert in Les Misérables. Off-Broadway: Silence! The Musical, Sweet and Sad (Obie Award), That Hopey Changey Thing, The Great American Trailer Park Musical. Other Credits: Ghost Brothers of Darkland County (Alliance Theatre), All About Us (Westport Playhouse), Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera (Hamburg, Germany), The Most Happy Fella (American Songbook/Lincoln Center). Opera: Wozzeck (Curtis Institute Of Music), Regina (Kennedy Center). TV: “Ed,” “Deadline,” “Gary Powers,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Criminal Intent,” “The Jury.” Film: After.Life; The Legend of Zorro; Van Helsing; Monday Night Mayhem; Someone Like You; The Bread, My Sweet; Opa!. (As of October 2012)
Broadway: Wilder, Wilder, Wilder; Good People. National Tour: Proof. Other Theater: Human Error (City Theatre); Bhutan (Cherry Lane); Dangerous Liaisons (Huntington Theatre); The Pavilion, Suburban Motel (Rattlestick Theatre), Betrayal (Northern Stage), Bad Dates (City Theatre), The Director (Arclight Theatre), June Moon (Drama Department), He She Them (Shubert Theatre/Boston). She originated the role of Mary in the World Premiere of The Whale at Denver Center Theatre Company. Film and Television: Hangnail (Slamdance, 2011), Romance and Cigarettes (dir., John Turturro), all the “Law & Orders,” “Third Watch,” “Deadline,” “Kevin Hill,” “Royal Pains,” “All My Children,” “Loving,” “The Line” (Gemini, ACTRA nominations, Best Actress). (As of October 2012)
Cory Michael Smith previously appeared at Playwrights Horizons originating the role of Kyle in The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World. He also originated the role of Elder Thomas in the world premiere of The Whale at Denver Center Theatre Company. He recently appeared Off-Broadway in the U.S. premiere of Cock (The Duke on 42nd Street). Regional: Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Tales From Red Vienna, The Huntsmen (Portland Center Stage), The Fantasticks (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and Barrington Stage Company). He is a graduate of Otterbein University. (As of October 2012)
Creative Team
Mimi Lien
Scenic DesignJessica Pabst
Costume DesignJane Cox
Lighting DesignFitz Patton
Sound DesginAlaina Taylor
Production Stage ManagerRecent theatre design projects: LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD by Samuel D. Hunter directed by Joe Mantello and starring Laurie Metcalf; INHERIT THE WIND by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, directed by Henry Godinez, at the Goodman’s Albert Theatre. THE COST OF LIVING by Martyna Majok, directed by Jo Bonney on Broadway at the Samuel Friedman Theatre; Other Broadway credits include The Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of MARVIN'S ROOM by Scott McPherson directed by Anne Kauffman starring Lili Taylor, Celia Weston, and Janeane Garofalo and THE HEIDI CHRONICLES by Wendy Wasserstein, directed by Pam MacKinnon starring Elisabeth Moss, Jason Biggs, and Bryce Pinkham.
Playwrights Horizons’ 2012/2013 season productions are generously supported by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
The Whale has received generous support from the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation and the Jerome Foundation.
Photos of (1) Tasha Lawrence, Cory Michael Smith, Cassie Beck, and Shuler Hensley; (2) Tasha Lawrence and Shuler Hensley; (3) Cory Michael Smith and Reyna de Courcy; and (4) Shuler Hensley and Cassie Beck by Joan Marcus.
RIVETING. An impassioned and arresting clash of minds and emotions. I was glued to the stage. Hensley’s performance is equally dynamic and horrifying.
VIBRANT AND PROVOCATIVE. Hunter explores his material with sharp-eared skill and sensitivity. McCallum's production handles Hunter's text with clarity and devotion, getting uniformly strong performances from his five-person cast.
EXTRAORDINARY. As he did in his breakthrough play A Bright New Boise, Hunter has constructed an outsize, gothic scenario in tender miniature,
WONDERFUL. Shuler Hensley gives a startlingly poignant performance. Under Davis McCallum’s sensitive direction, you feel as if you’ve met real people, made of flesh and blood.
AN AFFECTING NEW DRAMA. There may be no more startling image on a New York stage right now than the one greeting audiences at Playwrights Horizons when the lights go up on The Whale.
COMPELLING, FUNNY, AND UNEXPECTEDLY IMPACTFUL. Tony and Olivier Award winner Shuler Hensley is remarkably affecting job as 600-pound Charlie. Directed by Davis McCallum with no holds barred.
FOUR STARS. A deeply affecting and piercingly amusing play by Samuel D. Hunter. Davis McCallum’s production leaves an emotional wallop in its wake.
CRITIC'S PICK. FOUR STARS. Sharp and funny. Hensley is harrowingly good, endowing Charlie with wit and dignity.
