The Doña Ana Arts Council welcomes New Mexico’s professional theater troupe Fusion Theatre Company back to the Rio Grande Theatre as they present Tony Award-winning playwright Enda Walsh’s Obie Award and Irish Times Award-winning Best Play The New Electric Ballroom Saturday, May 2 and Sunday, May 3. Directed by Fusion regular Gil Lazier, who directed last year’s crowd pleasing production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, The New Electric Ballroom is a fanciful exploration of youth, hope and yearning set against the backdrop of a small Irish fishing village.
Enda Walsh is called “one of Ireland’s most original dramatic voices” by Charles McNulty of the LA Times and lauded for his “breathtaking lyrical gift capable of encompassing daft humor and spine-chilling truths in language that still remains powerfully real,” by Charles Isherwood of the New York Times. Walsh is the Tony Award-winning playwright of the musical Once. He also co-wrote the film Hunger, about Bobby Sands, which won the Camera d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival and was directed by Steve McQueen and starred Michael Fassbender.
In The New Electric Ballroom, two world weary sisters, damaged to the point of nihilism by the hateful slings and arrows of love, spend their hours reliving, in painful detail, a night of humiliation and shame from their distant past in an attempt to “save” their younger sister from the dangers of the outside world. Re-enacting that fateful night – complete with a surreal juxtaposition of miniskirts, makeup, rock music and sponge cake – the sisters, both now in their 60s, spin their cautionary tale into a tightly choreographed family mythology of despair. At the same time, their younger sister, recruited as ringmaster, referees the demented circadian rituals while contemplating the direction of her own life.
The Rio Grande Theatre is located at 211 N. Main Street, in Las Cruces. Doors open at 7 p.m. Saturday and the performance begins at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 1:30 p.m. Sunday and the performance begins at 2 p.m. Advance tickets are $32.25 (Main Floor) or $22 (Balcony) and can be purchased via the website at www.RioGrandeTheatre.com, or by phone and at the Rio Grande Theatre box office, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. $10 Student rush tickets are available 15 minutes before show time (with valid student ID). For more information visit www.RioGrandeTheatre.com or call (575) 523-6403.