Show Summary

THE MARRIAGE BED
West Coast Premiere! 
February 11-28, 2010

By Nona Shepphard.  Directed by Rosina Reynolds.
Featuring Dana Hooley and Dré Slaman

Jeni loves Val and Val loves Jeni.  But is that enough reason to get married, especially when you’re not sure your girlfriend is over her ex, and one of you is not out to your family.  Once the United Kingdom approved civil partnerships in 2005, same-sex couples had to ask themselves: “Do I want to make a commitment?  Do we want to make a big splash?  If so, what sort of splash? Shall it be the pink limousines, or shall we walk?  Shall we invite my mother?  (If she says no, it will make me feel really awful and spoil the day.)  Do I want to be formally tied to another person?”  All this and a fourposter bed!  Reynolds has directed The Twilight of the Golds, Beautiful Thing and Wrinkles, among others for Diversionary. Funny, touching, timely and ingenious.  Underwritten by Joann Clark. 

Creative Team

Dana Hooley	Dré Slaman

Nona Shepphard

Nona Shepphard read Classics at King’s College, London, specialising in Greek Drama, before she began her theatrical life as an actor back in her home town of Liverpool for two years at The Playhouse. Having made her directorial debut at the Nuffield Theatre Southampton, (Poliakoff’s Hitting Town, Pinter’s The Caretaker), she continued to direct until she wrote her first play when she was Associate Director at the Chester Gateway Theatre.

Since leaving Chester in 1982, she has been working freelance as a writer and director for many companies both in the UK and abroad, with over a hundred and fifity productions and forty commissioned plays to her credit.  Her plays for young people, which have received several awards, have been seen in USA, Canada, Europe and Russia, with Getting Through visiting Toronto for three successive years.

Recent writing: You’re Thinking About Doughnuts, Forbidden Fruit and Tobacco Road  (Nottingham Playhouse), Bed of Arrows, a trilogy of plays adapted from the great Hindu Epic The Mahabharata, (The Year of Opera and Musical Theatre), Cafe Vesuvio, (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester), Crazy Lady (Lincoln), Idle Pop (Quicksilver Theatre Co) In the Parlour With the Ladies, In the Bunker with the Ladies, Signs of a Diva (Drill Hall, London) The Marriage Bed (Ruby Tuesday Productions), A Tale for Winter (Quicksilver Theatre Co).

Recent directing includes a short film Only A Kiss?(The Prince’s Trust), Cafe Vesuvio, (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester), Crazy Lady (Lincoln, Leicester, Drill Hall London, New York),  A Passionate Woman, Krishna’s Lila,  Romeo and Juliet, Two Old Ladies, East is East, Bali – the Sacrifice (Leicester Haymarket), Love Me Slender (The New Vic, Stoke),) her own plays In the Parlour With the Ladies,  In the Bunker with the Ladies, and, with Jenny Sealy, Signs of a Diva – (Drill Hall, London, Edinburgh and tour). At RADA in 2004, she directed her own piece Installation 496, based on a design installation by takis, which celebrated Sophocles’ 2500th and RADA’s 100th anniversary, and  was part of the Cultural Olympic celebrations; in 2005, Roy William’s Sing Yer Heart Out fer the Lads, in 2007, Scenes from the Big Picture by Owen McAfferty,  and most recently Boxergirl, which she devised and wrote with the cast.

She is Artistic Director of ASC, a company based in New York, for whom she has directed Measure for Measure (The Bleeker Street Theatre, New York), Hamlet (1400, Los Angeles), and her own plays Crazy Lady (Solas, New York) and The Marriage Bed (Sanford Meisner, New York).  

She is external examiner for Drama Centre’s MA in European Classical Acting  making annual visits to the Vakhtangov Institute in Moscow.  Since 1987, she has had two associations – the first at the Drill Hall, London, most notably writing and directing seven legendary all women  pantos.  Secondly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she is an Associate Director.  She is shortly premiering  a new commission - Star-Shaped Diva, the second part of what she hopes will be a Diva trilogy, and has recently been in Hong Kong performing in The Marriage Bed.

Press Photos

Pictured(l-r): Dré Slaman and Dana Hooley. Photo Credit: Daren Scott.	Pictured(l-r): Dana Hooley and Dré Slaman. Photo Credit: Daren Scott.
Pictured: Dana Hooley. Photo Credit: Daren Scott.	Pictured: Dré Slaman. Photo Credit: Daren Scott.
Pictured: Dré Slaman. Photo Credit: Daren Scott.	Pictured(l-r): Dré Slaman and Dana Hooley. Photo Credit: Daren Scott.
Pictured(l-r): Dré Slaman and Dana Hooley. Photo Credit: Daren Scott.	Pictured(l-r): Dré Slaman and Dana Hooley. Photo Credit: Daren Scott.
Pictured(l-r): Dré Slaman and Dana Hooley. Photo Credit: Daren Scott.

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 6, 2010

West Coast Premiere of “The Marriage Bed” next at Diversionary

Diversionary Theatre will produce the West Coast premiere of Nona Shepphard’s The Marriage Bed as the fourth show of their 2009-2010 season.  In The Marriage Bed, Jeni loves Val and Val loves Jeni. But is that enough reason to get married, especially when you’re not sure your girlfriend is over her ex, and one of you is not out to your family? Diversionary’s production will be directed by Rosina Reynolds, and feature Dana Hooley and Dré Slaman.  The show will run for three weeks from February 11-28. The Marriage Bed is underwritten by Joann Clark.

Once the United Kingdom approved civil partnerships in 2005, same-sex couples had to ask themselves: “Do I want to make a commitment? Do we want to make a big splash? If so, what sort of splash? Shall it be the pink limousines, or shall we walk? Shall we invite my mother? (If she says no, it will make me feel really awful and spoil the day.) Do I want to be formally tied to another person?”

The play has been seen in London, Hong Kong and New York. From an article in Time Out Hong Kong: Until writing The Marriage Bed, the notion of matrimony never even crossed Nona Shepphard’s mind.  “I’ve always steered clear of marriage really,” says Shepphard, who’s based in London.  “Waking up one morning and saying, ‘I’m going to get married today’ – my instant reaction was sort of horrified,” she says with a laugh.  Shepphard was first commissioned to write the play for a theatre in London, and while most ideas about marriage were foreign to her, one thing was clear: she wanted to focus on a relationship where the two characters are still very much in love.  In the story, Jeni, is an Indian woman who was once married to a man, but is now contemplating tying the knot with her lover Val, a gal with a firecracker personality and feminist outlook. Val has always fought for equal rights, but since the Civil Partnership Act was passed in London, she’s been struggling with the idea of a legal commitment. That irony creates a comedic undertone throughout the play, drawing out the all-too-common issues couples face before being pronounced husband and wife – or, in their case, wife and wife. 

Playwright Nona Shepphard read Classics at King’s College, London, specializing in Greek Drama, before she began her theatrical life as an actor back in her home town of Liverpool.  She is Artistic Director of ASC, a company based in New York, for whom she has directed Measure for Measure (The Bleeker Street Theatre, New York), Hamlet (1400, Los Angeles), and her own plays Crazy Lady (Solas, New York) and The Marriage Bed (Sanford Meisner, New York).  Since 1987, she has had two associations – the first at the Drill Hall, London, most notably writing and directing seven legendary all-women pantos; and secondly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she is an Associate Director. 

Rosina Reynolds has directed at Diversionary several times, including Happy Endings Are Extra, The Twilight of the Golds, Beautiful Thing, Wrinkles, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde and Lot’s Daughters.  Dana Hooley recently appeared at Diversionary in The New Century, Facing East, and The Long Christmas Ride Home, and with ion theatre company in Frozen.  Dré Slaman recently appeared in Mo`olelo’s production of 9 Parts of Desire and is making her Diversionary debut.

During the run, Diversionary will display Bela Dornan’s 142 Days of Equality (www.142days.com), which features pictures of same-sex couples who married during the 142 days when it was legal to get married in California.

Diversionary Theatre was started in 1986.  The mission of the theatre is to produce plays with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes that portray characters in their complexity and diversity both historically and contemporarily. 

The Marriage Bed previews February 11 and 12, and opens on Saturday, February 13 and runs through Sunday, February 28.  Performance times are: Wednesday & Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday & Saturday at 8:00pm, Sunday at 2:00 & 7:00pm.  Single tickets are $29-$33 with discounts available for students, seniors (60+), military and groups (10 or more).  For information, call the Diversionary box office at 619.220.0097 or log on to www.diversionary.org.

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Financial support for Diversionary Theatre is provided in part by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

Wells Fargo and the Gay & Lesbian Times are Season Premiere Sponsors of Diversionary’s 2009-2010 Season.

 

Reviews

San Diego Union-Tribune
'The Marriage Bed': A comfy story about commitment
By Janice Steinberg, special to the Union-Tribune
Friday, February 19, 2010 at 12:04 a.m.

A four-poster bed — a lovely, simple design with inviting, cushy-looking bedding — stands center-stage throughout “The Marriage Bed” at Diversionary Theatre. It’s a set reminiscent of “The Fourposter,” the 1951 Tony-winning play that followed a couple from their wedding night to old age.

Also like “The Fourposter,” Nona Shepphard’s “The Marriage Bed” offers a warm, witty look at an enduring relationship, in this case between Val and Jeni, a lesbian couple who are about to become civil partners under a 2005 British law.

Shepphard, a British theater artist who works on both sides of the Atlantic — as an associate director at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and artistic director of the New York-based ASC theater company — doesn’t push the case for gay marriage. Rather, with a light and literary hand, she explores the issues that arise when a couple suddenly has the right to make a formal commitment to each other.

The two have plenty of issues in “The Marriage Bed,” being given its West Coast premiere in a nimbly paced production directed by Rosina Reynolds. For one thing, after seven years with Val, Jeni has never come out to her Indian family. And there are Val’s ex-girlfriends.

We meet Dana Hooley’s Val as a voice issuing from behind the bed curtains, and what a voice—brash, confiding, funny, and smart. Hooley brings out Val’s complexity. She’s tough and forthright yet also tender, a radical feminist who detests the thought of “aping heterosexual marriage” but at the same time envisions a gala celebration.

Val’s the kind of writ-large character who could use up all the air in the room, but Dre Slaman holds her own as the younger, more conventional Jeni. Slaman, a flashing-eyed beauty is quite convincing as the Indian Jeni. And she brilliantly switches back and forth in dialogues between Jeni and Jeni’s mother — represented by a hand-held puppet — not only juggling characters but shifting from Jeni’s lightly inflected English to her mother’s more pronounced accent.

Reynolds’ direction is crisp, with almost-flawless transitions between the “wedding” day and the past. The first time this happens, it’s a bit jarring, though perhaps we simply need to get used to it.

And for all the laughs, it’s truly touching when Val gets over her last-minute cold feet and, standing in front of the four-poster, she recites Shakespeare’s sonnet, “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,” to her beloved. (CRITIC'S CHOICE)

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The Reader
Jeff Smith
February 15, 2010

The Marriage Bed

In Nona Shepphard's comedy, Val's a radical lesbian feminist convinced that marriage is an ancient, patriarchal institution. Her partner of seven years, Jenaya, is a middle-class lawyer who has concealed her sexual preference from her Hindu family. When the British government passes the Civil Partnership Act, which recognizes and gives rights to gay and lesbian partnerships, the should's and should not's stack up swiftly. For Diversionary Theatre, director Rosina Reynolds has crafted a charming two-hander with deft theatrical touches, including shadow- and real puppets. Craig Noel Award-winner Dana Hooley (Val) and a sprightly Dré Slaman (Jenaya) perform in, on, and around a prominent four-poster bed. Accentuated by Jennifer Brawn Gittings's excellent costumes, Val and Jenaya are at once diverse- -- the one extroverted, the latter, intro- -- and a keenly matched pair. Worth a try.

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San Diego Arts
"The Marriage Bed" at Diversionary

A light look at serious issues
By Don Braunagel
Posted on Mon, Feb 15th, 2010

Wedding planning, as most of us know from experience, can be mightily stressful — How much to spend? Who to invite? — etc., etc., etc. And then what if the betrothed couple comprises a self-proclaimed “radical lesbian feminist” who disdains marriage as a heterosexual conceit unworthy of emulation, and a well-established, wealthy lawyer who’s still in the closet to her family and most friends?

That’s the situation in “The Marriage Bed,” Nona Sheppard’s comedy about the dilemma faced by two seven-year lovers in 2006 after the United Kingdom passed its Civil Partners Act, giving marital rights to same-sex couples. Diversionary is giving “Bed” its West Coast debut, especially timely as a San Francisco judge weighs his ruling on the legality of California’s Prop. 8, which banned gay marriage.

Val (Dana Hooley) is 55, a London Underground station manager and a longtime veteran of women’s battles for equal rights. Jeni (Dré Slaman) is 30-something, highly paid and the veteran of an unhappy marriage to a male. They’re also considered interracial, Val being white and Jeni with Indian parents, but this play makes little of that particular issue.

More germanely, it illustrates that, in addition to the usual decisions couples have to make about marriage and commitment to each other, gay pairs have to struggle with attitudes shaped over the decades about the institution itself. Val, for instance, awakens from a bad dream that represented her mixed feelings about the imminent event, which she cleverly illustrates to the audience with silhouetted figures and Jason Bieber’s always-helpful lighting.

Sheppard’s script has the two women, depending on their feelings of the moment, go back and forth on the idea of wedding, allowing discussion of the full range of issues and emotions involved. When Val expresses reluctance because she fears being dependent on anyone, Jeni details the list of valuable and human rights given by the Act — which brought applause from a highly sympathetic audience.

Hooley, fresh from winning a San Diego Theatre Critics Craig Noel Award for her performance in Ion Theatre’s “Frozen,” gives another rangy portrayal, and she’s balanced neatly by the more restrained Slaman under Rosina Reynolds’ appealing direction.

Oh, yes, there’s also a third character — Jeni’s mom. She’s embodied by a puppet (uncredited, unless it’s considered one of David Medina’s pertinent props), which Slaman deftly manipulates and enlivens with a mother’s Indian-accented voice.

Omar Ramos’s sound provide appropriate emphasis or underscoring, and Jennifer Brawn Gittings’ costumery shows best in the colorful tops worn by Slaman. Jane Lamotte’s set consists mainly of — what else? — a four-poster, which converts neatly for a stirring final image. There’s also a pedestal table featuring a wooden carving of a Hindu goddess, whose profile, at least as depicted here, remarkably resembles Angela Lansbury.

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San Diego CityBeat
Against the odds
The Marriage Bed: Diversionary works wonders with an otherwise so-what story
By Martin Jones Westlin
February 16, 2010

Diversionary Theatre’s The Marriage Bed is as formulaic a romantic comedy as you’ll find—a London lesbian couple air their differences on getting hitched as the day of their civil union approaches. Exes, a huge age disparity and an unsuspecting family are only a few of the obstacles that get lots of play here; take out the gay element, and many times, this Nona Sheppard script could pass for a mediocre piece about a straight couple’s personal inventory as they make their way to the altar.

But damned if this show doesn’t work, and quite nicely. In the first place, Dana Hooley is on fire as an over-age, working-class type with cold feet, and Sheppard’s generous background material gives us more than ample reason to take both girls seriously. The Marriage Bed’s plot may be unremarkable, but that’s the point—the simplicity lays the groundwork for the strong production values, the compelling under-stories and the thorough examination of two people’s personal values as they contemplate the biggest step of their lives.

Jeni (Dré Slaman) and Val (Hooley) have been together for seven years, and to look at the two, you’d wonder why and how. Frumpy, pudding-faced Val, 55, is a sailor’s granddaughter and an ex-schoolteacher who operates a London subway station. Thirty-something Jeni is an up-and-coming lawyer of East Indian descent, divorced from a successful man and drop-dead gorgeous. Their differences fester as the big day looms—Val declares she doesn’t want to be tied to anyone; Jeni, ever the bride, invited 100 people to the ceremony and has visions of wedding dresses. There’s one other little detail: Jeni is not yet out to her family, and she can only guess what her traditionalist mom will think about it all.

Mom, in fact, is a third character here, in the form of a puppet that Jeni operates. The analogy couldn’t capture Jeni’s sense of whimsy more completely, and the comic contrast comes on the heels of Val’s heartfelt misgivings: “I contented myself,” she says, “with berating my heterosexual friends that got married because they betrayed me and the cause by doing something I was prevented from doing.”

“The cause” culminated in 2004 with the United Kingdom’s Civil Partnership Act, enacted the following year. It outlines same-sex couples’ rights and responsibilities to one another, the bulk of which are identical to those in a legal marriage. Sheppard is careful to describe them in user-friendly language, and she wisely assigns those speeches to lawyer Jeni as a character-development device. Slaman shines in this sequence, abandoning the legalist’s demeanor for that of the loving partner, equally daunted by the prospect of forever together.

The Archies’ “Sugar Sugar” is a universally terrible tune, but trust me: It serves its purpose here. It so happens that it’s Jeni and Val’s song, and it’s as unlikely a signature piece as the couple are unlikely a match. Director Rosina Reynolds and her cast and crew find all kinds of contradictions like this, and they exploit them with a sense of fun and panache that absolutely trumps the unpromising plot.

This review is based on the matinée performance of Feb. 14. The Marriage Bed runs through Feb. 28 at Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Blvd. in University Heights. $29-$33.www.diversionary.org. Write to marty@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

This n That

Are you “legally” married?

During the run of The Marriage Bed, Diversionary will display Belá Dornan’s 142 Days of Equality (www.142days.com), which features pictures of same-sex couples who married during the 142 days when it was legal to get married in California.  We’re inviting the community to drop off or email us your wedding day picture which we will display in conjunction with Belá’s display.  Any photos submitted will not be returned.  Please label your picture with your first names (left, right, top, bottom, etc.) and date of your marriage.  Drop off at the theatre, or email to boxoffice@diversionary.org – please put “photo for lobby display” in the subject line.