Theater: 59E59 Theaters / 59 East 59th St., New York, NY, 10022
Synopsis:
Lingua Franca follows innocent abroad, Steven Flowers, as he travels from National Service in South-East Asia to 1950's Florence. He soon finds himself working for a chaotically-run language school, together with a cosmopolitan muddle of six foreign misfits killing their post- war nihilism in the cafés of Florence, the cradle of Renaissance high culture.
Based around a leading character in Olivier Award-winning playwright Peter Nichols' acclaimed work Privates on Parade, this fast-paced, sexually charged production was the toast of London over the summer.
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November 16, 2010: How do you say Angry Young Man in Italian? A classic specimen of that breed — and I do mean the type that warrants capital letters — shows up on the banks of the Arno, teaching English to mid-20th-century Florentines, in Peter Nichols’s “Lingua Franca,” which is receiving its American premiere at 59E59 Theaters.
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November 16, 2010: Peter Nichols' latest play, "Lingua Franca," is a deceptively sedate, neo-Chekhovian character study of misfit language teachers at a private school in mid-1950s Florence, Italy. But just as you start to think that the experience is never going to transcend pleasant, Nichols delivers a surprise haymaker that shows just how crafty he's been.
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November 16, 2010: Most people asked to name a play by Peter Nichols would probably cite A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Passion Play or Privates on Parade. Though Lingua Franca has only recently been rscueded from obscurity by Michael Gieleta the artistic director of Cherub Company, it could almost be considered a sequel to Privates on Parade as its central character is none other than that play's Private Steven Flowers, but now a private citizen whose current uniform consists of very un-Florentine corduroy trousers and suspenders.
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November 17, 2010: Peter Nichols' involving Lingua Franca, now at 59E59 Theaters as part of the "Brits Off Broadway" series, is a meditation on the loss of innocence and disillusionment that spread through Europe during the decade following World War II. Under Michael Gieleta's fine-tuned direction, the cast does its utmost, but they can't completely overcome the text's disruptive flaws.
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