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Following its very successful run at the Malibu Playhouse earlier this year, the award-winning production of Noel Coward’s ‘The Vortex‘ directed by Gene Franklin Smith is now headed to West Hollywood, being produced by British film director and writer Amanda Eliasch.
Amanda, an award winner herself for her film ‘The Gun the Cake and the Butterfly” which transformed into a play ‘As I Like It’ – played last year in London, followed by a successful run at the Macha Theatre in West Hollywood. Eliasch explains how she, “Fell in love with the play.”
Eliasch, a known supporter of the arts, told The British Weekly: “I saw this production, which is now set in the Sixties, back in May and fell in love with it immediately. I felt it needed a wider audience, so I reached out to the super-talented director Gene Franklin Smith and propose I produce it.”
Starring the remarkable talents of Shannon Holt as “Florence” and Craig Robert Young as “Nicky,” ‘The Vortex’ premiered in 1924 in London, and its scandalous subject matter of drug abuse, repressed homosexuality, nymphomania and Oedipal jealousy made Coward an overnight sensation. Combining the playwright’s trademark wit and trenchant one-liners, The Vortex surprises audiences with its climactic emotional showdown between a mother and son that evokes Hamlet.
Holt and Young are joined by an impressive cast which includes Victoria Hoffman as “Helen,” Daniel Jimenez as “Tom,” Skye LaFontaine as “Bunty”, newcomer John Mawson as “David” and Cameron Mitchell Jr as “Pawnie”.
In this new production the setting is updated to Mod London of 1965. The play opens with Nicky Lancaster bringing his elegant fiancée Bunty home to introduce her to his famous mother, stage actress Florence Lancaster. Nicky is shocked to discover that Florence has taken a much-younger lover, and when Bunty ditches Nicky to run off with Florence’s boy-toy, both are forced to confront the truth about themselves.
The Vortex will be a guest production of The Matrix Theatre, located at 7657 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90068 and opens November 13 and runs to December 14 with performances Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM and Sundays at 3 PM. Tickets are $34 and may be purchased online at www.plays411.com/vortex or by calling (323) 960-7735.
