Orson's Shadow is a play by Austin Pendleton

Austin Pendleton

Austin Pendleton is an American film, television, and stage actor, a playwright, and a theatre director and instructor.-Life and career:...

. The play received a Lucille Lortel

Lucille Lortel

Lucille Lortel was an American actress and theater producer who is remembered as the namesake of an off-Broadway playhouse and theatrical award....

 Award nomination for Outstanding Play and won the Drama League Award

Drama League Award

The Drama League Awards, created in 1935, honor distinguished productions and performances both on Broadway and Off-Broadway, in addition to recognizing exemplary career achievements in theatre, musical theatre, and directing...

 for Distinguished Performance.

The play debuted at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 in January 2000 and was performed at the Old Globe Theatre

Old Globe Theatre

The Old Globe is a professional theatre company located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It produces about 15 plays and musicals annually in summer and winter seasons...

 in San Diego in September of that year http://www.curtainup.com/orsonsshadow.html.

The off-Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 production, directed by David Cromer

David Cromer

David Cromer is an American theatre director and stage actor. He has received recognition for his work Off-Broadway and in his native Chicago. Cromer has won or been nominated for numerous awards, including winning the Lucille Lortel Award and Obie Award for his direction of Our Town...

, opened on March 13, 2005 at the Barrow Street Theatre, where it ran for 349 performances. The cast included Jeff Still as Orson Welles, John Judd as Laurence Olivier, Susan Bennett as Joan Plowright, Lee Roy Rogers as Vivien Leigh, Tracy Letts

Tracy Letts

Tracy Letts is an American playwright and actor who received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play August: Osage County.-Biography:...

 as Ken Tynan, and Ian Westerfer as the stagehand Sean.

Since its New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 staging, Orson's Shadow has been mounted by a number of regional theatre

Regional theatre in the United States

Regional theaters, or resident theaters, in the United States are professional or semi-professional, theater companies that produce their own seasons. The term regional theatre most often refers to professional theatres outside of New York City...

s, including Marin Theatre Company

Marin Theatre Company

The Marin Theatre Company is a professional regional theatre located in Mill Valley, California.It was founded as the Mill Valley Center for the Performing Arts by Sali Lieberman and Al White in 1966, with its first twenty seasons produced at the Mill Valley Golf Club...

 in Mill Valley, California

Mill Valley, California

Mill Valley is a city in Marin County, California, United States located about north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge. The population was 13,903 at the 2010 census.Mill Valley is located on the western and northern shores of Richardson Bay...

 http://www.talkinbroadway.com/regional/sanfran/s828.html, Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland

Bethesda, Maryland

Bethesda is a census designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House , which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda...

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/07/AR2007020702520.html, Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...

 http://www.unicorntheatre.org/0607show_2.htm, and the Gorilla Theatre in Tampa, Florida

Tampa, Florida

Tampa is a city in the U.S. state of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County. Tampa is located on the west coast of Florida. The population of Tampa in 2010 was 335,709....

 http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/01/news_pf/Weekend/When_the_stars_start_.shtml.

In 2006 it received a rehearsed reading at London's Old Vic Theatre

Old Vic

The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...

 .

Plot

Based on true events, it is set in 1960 London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where Orson Welles

Orson Welles

George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

, already in the declining years of his career, is directing a production of Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...

's Rhinoceros

Rhinoceros (play)

Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play belongs to the school of drama known as the Theatre of the Absurd...

starring Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

 and Joan Plowright

Joan Plowright

Joan Ann Plowright, Baroness Olivier, DBE , better known as Dame Joan Plowright, is an English actress, whose career has spanned over sixty years. Throughout her career she has won two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award and has been nominated for an Academy Award, an Emmy, and two BAFTA Awards...

. Olivier, fresh from his triumphant portrayal of vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

an Archie Rice on stage and about to reprise the role in the film adaptation of John Osborne

John Osborne

John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre....

's The Entertainer

The Entertainer (film)

The Entertainer is a 1960 film adaptation of the stage play of the same name by John Osborne, which told the story of a failing third-rate music hall stage performer who tried to keep his career going even as his personal life fell apart....

, and Plowright are in the early stages of a romantic liaison developing at the end of his tumultuous marriage to Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire , a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark...

. All four, and critic Kenneth Tynan

Kenneth Tynan

Kenneth Peacock Tynan was an influential and often controversial English theatre critic and writer.-Early life:...

, figure in the plot, which debates the merits of stage vs. screen, the mental and emotional struggle theatrical performers endure when contemplating a leap to films, and what occurs when their movie careers are hampered by the controls thrust upon them by the studio establishment.

It is a study of theatrical egos, each of the protagonists living mainly on the stage than in real life, each one feeling insecure while jockeying for power.

External links

• Radio adaptation of play; can be heard online for a limited time
• Official website (Internet archive copy; actual domain ownership lapsed.)
• Lortel Archives listing
• 2005 New York Times review
• 2005 CurtainUp review