Dying City
By Christopher Shinn.  Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama 2007.
Directed by Gary Ambler
October 16 - 25

The Celebration Company at the Station Theatre presents Dying City written by Christopher Shinn and directed by Gary Ambler. Shinn is a New York-based playwright whose first play, Four, premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre when he was only 23 years old. Many of his other plays have premiered at this prestigious venue and have since been produced all over the United States and around the world. He has won an Obie for playwriting and a Guggenheim fellowship.  Dying City was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Shinn is known for delving deeply into the intrinsic values of human nature, class systems, family relations, and sexuality.

Dying City deals with all these issues plus a few more that keep the audience and actors on their toes. Shinn has often said that if he were not a writer, he would have been a psychoanalyst; a fact made very clear in this show. The story is a commentary on physical and emotional violence and how it affects not just those directly involved but is dispersed to so many individuals down the line.

 At the top of the play Kelly is unexpectedly visited by Peter, her late husband’s identical twin brother. The two have not spoken since Craig’s funeral a year before. As the show progresses, we are taken back and forth through time and are shown the intricacies of many intertwined relationships. The play provocatively addresses such topics as the war in Iraq, manipulation, fear of abandonment and failure, and the separation of social classes and what happens when those lines are crossed. Throughout the play, we see the three characters being forced to face their own demons and those of the people they love.

Dying City is expertly directed by seasoned Celebration Company member Gary Ambler. Ambler has most recently directed Stone Cold Dead Serious by Adam Rapp and appeared in Iron Kisses by James Still, The Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh, and Where the Great Ones Run by Mark Roberts. He leads the cast of two proficiently through Christopher Shinn’s somewhat disturbing world. His vision of the story comes to life through skillful performances by Mike Prosise (who played in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, Where the Great Ones Run by Mark Roberts, and co-directed Iron Kisses by James Still) and Martha Mills (who acted in Sexual Perversity in Chicago, stage managed Woyzeck by George Buchner and The Balcony by Jean Genet, and produced Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams and Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh.)