When Canyon Moon Theatre
employees first attempted to get the rights to produce the new play, Trying, by
Joanna McClelland Glass, CMT was told they were ““not available.”” The New York
producers had decided to do a national tour next year, and were not releasing
the rights until the tour was over.
So, CMT sent in the muscle, Mary
Guaraldi, its producing artistic director. Guaraldi placed a personal call to
the Barbara Hogenson Agency. Guaraldi has known Barbara for more than 20 years,
and asked if she could intercede.
Hogenson called the producers
and the results of that conversation will be seen on stage at Canyon Moon, from
April 24 to May 3. Guaraldi decided to do this show in place of The Immigrant,
because the rights may not be available again for a few years.
The cast features two seasoned
actors, Robert Bays and Amzell Magaletti, in the lead roles.
Judge Francis Biddle, played by
Bays, is brilliant, cantankerous and strong-willed. Sarah Schorr, played by
Magaletti, an equally strong-willed, young woman from the Canadian prairies, is
the latest in a string of secretaries hired to help Biddle with his memoirs.
Their mercurial relationship — wrought with paper, tears, laughter and iron-will
— comes to life in a play that has been a hit with audiences and critics alike.
This rich story is inspired by
Glass’ own experience with the real Judge Biddle, FDR’s attorney general and the
chief American justice of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Biddle threw off the
expectations of his wealthy Philadelphia upbringing to spend his life fighting
for what was right.
Many years later, Glass wrote,
““…… I knew that I was witnessing a man of great intellectual stature doing
battle, fiercely, with his mortality. And as our sometimes comical, sometimes
argumentative days together passed, my fondness for him grew.””
Bays was recently lured out of
acting retirement to star in CMT’s Murder at the Howard Johnson. He was
featured on Broadway in Tennessee Williams’ last play, Clothes for a Summer
Hotel, directed by Jose Quintero, starring Geraldine Page and David Canary,
which also played at the Kennedy Center. Off-Broadway, his best roles were
Oberon/Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a musical of The Merry Wives of
Windsor.
Magaletti has trained and worked
with San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, and is currently the
Associate Producer of Canyon Moon Theatre Company. She is a teaching artist for
Arizona Theatre Company’s America Plays Series, and will be directing and
teaching for its Summer on Stage program, this June. She has been on or behind
the stage in more than 50 productions around the United States. She appeared in
Talking With at Canyon Moon, and Sedona’s Vagina Monologues.
The Arizona premier of Trying
has one preview performance on Thursday, April 24. The show opens on Friday,
April 25 and runs through May 3, Thurs.-Sat., at 7:30 p.m., with a Sunday
matinee at 3 p.m. The theatre is dark, Saturday, April 26.
Preview tickets are $16. During
the run of the show, tickets are $19, full-time student tickets are $11.
Tickets are available online, or can be purchased at Rycus Corners in the VOC,
Clothing Reflections in the Bashas’ Shopping Center in Sedona, or by calling
Brown Paper Tickets at 1-(800) 838-3006.
