ABOUT THE INDISPUTABLE INTOXICATION OF MUSIC | Open: 05/08/12 Close: 05/17/12
“THE CITY CLUB” is a twisting noir morality tale of intrigue, murder, corruption and sex supported by one of the most seductive blues and jazz scores written for the stage in decades. It is the story of CHARLES “CHAZ” DAVENPORT, a young privileged scion of a spectacularly corrupt family whose vice grip on their city is as tight as it is inescapable. The sins of the father have visited unimaginable wealth on the son. Obsessed with music and the people who write it, play it, sing it and worship it; Chaz has opened The City Club, a Mecca of pure and unbridled musical genius, opportunity and escape. The club’s instant success attracts his father’s enemies who bring with them extremely creative and very effective revenge tactics.The universe inside the club spirals as low as city outside. Absinthe becomes the drink of choice, heroine the desired high and women the most valuable form of currency. What we have here is the forces of good and evil battling it out to a great score.
The city’s name has been withheld to protect the indicted.
ABOUT THE SETTING
It’s 1934. The Twenty-First Amendment just ended Prohibition; tuition to Harvard University is $410.00 per year; the FBI has recently ended the careers of John Dillinger, Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson; the drought problems in the Midwest have utterly destroyed over 35 million acres of farmland with another 225 million acres in danger; France is on the verge of civil war; Mao Zedong is on the march; Hitler is elected to the German presidency but retains the title of führer; Puerto Rico is insisting on statehood; the Dionne quintuplets are born in Ontario; Congress creates the FCC; Al Capp creates ‘Li’l Abner’; F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes ‘Tender Is the Night’; Fanny Brice opens in ‘The New Ziegfeld Follies’ at the Winter Garden Theatre; the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series and over 10,000 African-Americans leave Mississippi Delta on the Illinois Central Railroad for the North where they arrive with their music – the Blues - the singularly most influential style of music within the last 100 years.
It is the fusion of the Blues with the North’s Jazz that most energizes this musical.
Spain’s internationally acclaimed, multi award-winning comedy theater troupe Yllana (ee - YA - na) will make its long awaited Off-Broadway debut when Psycoductions (Juan Urrutia, Producer), with Executive Producer Aldo Scrofani, present 666, Yllana’s dirtiest and most demented show ever.
666 begins when three dangerous criminals (Fidel Fernandez, Joseph Michael O’Courneen and Juan Francisco Ramos Toro) and one misplaced innocent (Raul Cano) arrive on death row. Incarceration ironically sets free their wildest fantasies as, trapped between the iron gates and an electrified fence, they interact with each other and with the audience. At the end of all the comically bungled executions, all hell, quite literally, breaks out. No one is safe, least of all the audience! 666 is a rude and ribald collision between wordless Commedia dell’arte, physical theater, and slapstick.