It’s open, and it’s already making people talk! Audiences love its impassioned playing and deeply provoking subject matter. Tickets are selling fast, so don’t wait till it’s too late to see this extraordinary piece of stimulating and rewarding theatre.
Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance is John Arden’s masterpiece, and possibly the most deeply moral and humane anti-war play ever written.
Regarded as a classic since it was written in 1959, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance is a striking theatrical response to the dubious morality of a war being fought on a distant land for debatable reasons (sound familiar?). Four soldiers arrive in a mining town in the grip of a strike, and in the dead of winter. Their apparent mission – to recruit more soldiers for an unpopular foreign war – masks their actual intent: to confront its people with the realities of warfare.
The play is witty and impassioned, and written in a kind of rough-hewn poetry that grabs the ear and engages the heart. With a brilliant cast of 13, it’s the kind of epic-but-intimate drama TheatreFIRST excels at.
Don’t miss the regional premiere of this extraordinary play whose topical urgency is truly compelling.
“This is a spell-binding, mind-challenging drama that touches greatness, and what is more, it is written in that wonderful Arden language that seems to be hewn out of granite” Michael Billington – The Guardian
Featuring: Chris Ayles*, Rowan Brooks*, Noah Butler*, Ekow Daniels, Mitchell Field, David Fierro, Norman Hall, Emily Jordan, Larry LePaule, Garth Petal, Tom Reilly, Sue Trigg, Mike Vaughn*
(*Members, Actors’ Equity Association)
Dates and location:
Old Oakland Theatre
481 Ninth Street (at Broadway), downtown Oakland
Preview: Thursday, May 3rd – 8pm
Opening: Friday, May 4th – 8pm
Run: Thursday – Saturday 8pm, Sunday 3pm, through May 27th.
Ticket prices: Thursday, Sunday $21; Friday, Saturday $25; Preview $10
Under 25’s: Always half price.
Seniors, students, TBA members: $3 discount
Pay what you can: Thursday, May 10th.
Box Office and Information: 510 436 5085