presents
SATURDAY’S CHILDREN
By Maxwell Anderson
A Play Reading and Benefit
For the First Flight Theatre Company
At the UNDER St Marks Theater at 94 St Marks Place, NYC
Directed by Frank Farrell
Featuring
Joseph Bowen*
Danny Crawford*
Claudi Egli*
Frank Farrell*
Denise Alessandria Hurd*
Haley Karlich
and Paul Singleton*
*Denotes actors are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers.
Act 1
The Halevy’s Dining Room
June 1927
Act 2
The O’Neil’s Kitchen-Dining Room November 1927
Act 3
A Bedroom in Mrs. Gorlik’s Boarding House in East 35th Street
Three Weeks Later
Characters in Order of Appearance
Willy Sands… Joseph Bowen*
Florrie Sands… Claudia Egli*
Mrs. Halevy… Denise Alessandria Hurd*
Bobby… Haley Karlich
Mr. Halevy…Paul Singleton*
Rims O’Neil … Danny Crawford*
Mrs. Gorlik… Denise Alessandria Hurd*
Matty… Joseph Bowen*
The Chauffeur…Frank Farrell*
Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go. Friday's child is loving and giving Saturday's child works hard for a living. And the child that is born on the Sabbath Day, Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.
Old English Nursery Rhyme
WHO’S WHO IN
SATURDAY’S CHILDREN
JOSEPH BOWEN (Willy Sanda & Matty) moved to New York in 2013, and has since worked with APAC (Merrily We Roll Along), Project Shaw (The Devil’s Disciple), The Mechanicals (As You Like It and Twelfth Night), Cherry Lane (Harold and Rodney Play Chess) and Hamlet Isn’t Dead (Measure for Measure and King Lear). In Chicago, he did 17 shows with ShawChicago, Sunday in the Park with George at the Ravinia Festival, as well as a good deal of Regional Theater (PlayMakers Rep, New Harmony Theater, Meadow Brook Theater and Mill Mountain Theater.
DANNY CRAWFORD (Rims O’Neil) is thrilled to have another opportunity to work with First Flight Theatre Company. His previous touring and regional theatre credits include Luke in The Lighting Thief, Brom Bones in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Angelo in Measure for Measure and Laertes in Hamlet to name a few. Film/TV credits include “Redrum,” “Scorned,” “The Perfect Murder,” and “Playbook 360” amongst others. www.DannyCrawford.com
CLAUDIA EGLI (Florrie Sands) actor and singer has performed with the Light Opera of Manhattan in several of their past productions. She has appeared in film and TV productions including all five seasons of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. For the past five years Claudia has been discovering the plays of 20th Century American playwright Maxwell Anderson performing with the First Flight Theatre Company and appearing in staged readings of his plays including Valley Forge, Elizabeth the Queen, Mary of Scotland (in the title role), The Masque of Queens, The Eve of St. Marks, The Feast of Ortolans, Second Overture, The Miracle of the Danube, White Desert and Sea-Wife. She stage-managed the company's production of Forgotten Soldiers performed at two churches in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan in 2018. This past August she appeared in the company's production of Shakespeare's Deaths as part of the Little Shakespeare Festival at the UNDER St. Marks Theater in NYC. Currently she can also be heard in the podcast Songs of the Pogo as Miz Ma'm'selle Hepzibah, a beautiful, coy French skunk frequently baking pies or preparing picnic baskets for her many admirers in Walt Kelly’s Okefenokee Swamp. Claudia also reads Shakespeare plays at the New York Public Libraries in collaboration with the Instant Shakespeare Company. She is honored and grateful to be performing at Under St Marks in First Flight's benefit reading of Maxwell Anderson's 1927 comedy Saturday's Children.
FRANK FARRELL (The Chauffeur, Director & Artistic Director of First Flight Theatre Company) most recently directed First Flight Theatre Company’s productions of Shakespeare’s Ladies at Tea and Shakespeare’s Deaths in NYC and Little Women at The Hermitage in Bergen County, NJ. He was an actor in Chicago for 40 years receiving three Joseph Jefferson acting nominations and recently returned to NYC where he was born. While in Chicago he directed and produced plays for Free Shakespeare Theatre Company, Temporary Theatre, Shakespeare’s Herd, Steppenwolf Theater, Raven Theatre, Equity Library Theater Chicago, the North Lakeside Players and Theatre-Hikes. For Citadel Theatre in Lake Forest, IL he directed outdoor productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Spoon River Anthology, Romeo and Juliet and Scapin. Frank has formed six theater companies along the way including Theatre-Hikes in Chicago and, in Grand Haven, Michigan, the Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company. In NYC he wrote, directed and produced Forgotten Soldiers from Our Forgotten War for the First Flight Theatre Company, the seventh theatre group he has formed. For First Flight he also coordinated several stage readings of Maxwell Anderson’s plays in New York City and Chicago. Frank directed and produced last summer’s First Flight production of Maxwell Anderson’s play Valley Forge at The Hermitage Mansion in Bergen County, New Jersey. His Zoom film In the Garden of Live Flowers recently won Best Biopic at the Green Academy Awards Film Festival.
DENISE ALESSANDRIA HURD* (Mrs. Halevy & Mrs. Gorlick) is happy to be back with the First Flight Theatre Company. In the past she has appeared in productions such as The Witlings and the award winning A Vampire’s Kiss in the Plague of 1666. She teaches in the Theatre Department at City College of New York. She comes from a theatre family and is so glad to be back in theaters again. She has appeared in regional theatres in such shows as The Play’s the Thing, Defying Gravity, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth and has done the Fight and Intimacy choreography for such shows as Intimate Apparel, The Secretaries, Ruined, Lear, Dorothy’s Coming Out Party, I Hate Hamlet, and Macbeth. She wishes to thank her mother, Merlyn, for all her love and support, her sisters, Michelle and Adrienne for all their support and inspiration and to remember her father, Hugh, for his loving heart and generous soul.
HALEY KARLICH (Bobby) Most recently appeared in First Flight’s double bill Shakespeare’s Ladies at Tea and Shakespeare’s Deaths with the Little Shakespeare Festival in NYC. She is an actor and production assistant of live theatre and film; recent credits include Insidious 5, Nutley Little Theatre’s Tin Cat Shoes, Tiny Viking Production’s Ghost Light, Fleischmann & Campanella’s The Visitation Opera, and other projects. With a BA in Theatre Studies & Musical Theatre, she’s also an experienced director, vocalist, combat and voiceover artist; appearing throughout the Radio Repertory Company of America’s Anne Manx audioseries, as well as dramas produced by Cape Swoosh Productions. Haley’s currently working on another major independent film, by the writer of Green Book.
PAUL SINGLETON* (Mr. Halevy) previously appeared in Henry IV Part 1, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Pride and Prejudice, Richard II, Henry VI, and Antony and Cleopatra with Hudson Classical Theater Company. New York Theater includes: Shakespeare at the Greene Space ‑ Brutus in Julius Caesar (New York Public Radio); Grit in a Sensitive Instrument (one-man play, Vineyard Theater – Cable TV also); When I Grow Up (lead, Playwright’s Horizons Festival); Careless Love (by John Olive – NY premiere), The Winter’s Tale, The Blue Carbuncle (also Theatre Encino, Los Angeles). Regional includes The Tempest, Idiot’s Delight, The Golden Age, Fallen Angels, The School for Scandal, P.S. Your Cat is Dead, Bedroom Farce. TV includes: “Conan O’Brien,” “All My Children,” “One Life to Live” and Comedy Central. As always, love to Nina and Paul.
MAXWELL ANDERSON (Playwright 1888 - 1959) His plays include White Desert (1923), What Price Glory (1924), First Flight (1925), Elizabeth the Queen (1930), Both Your Houses (1933), Mary of Scotland (1933), Valley Forge (1934), Winterset (1935), High Tor (1937), Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), Key Largo (1939); The Eve of St. Mark (1942), Truckline Café (1945), Joan of Lorraine (1946), Anne of the Thousand Days (1947), Lost in the Stars (1949), The Masque of Queens (1954), The Bad Seed (1954), Richard and Anne (1955) and The Golden Six (1961). Anderson also worked on numerous screenplays, including All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, Washington Merry-Go-Round (1932), Rain (1932), Death Takes a Holiday (1934), and So Red the Rose (1935). Plays of his that were turned into movies were Mary of Scotland (1936), Saturday's Children, which was filmed three times (once as Maybe It's Love), Winterset (1936), Elizabeth the Queen, which became The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), The Eve of St. Mark (1944), Knickerbocker Holiday (1944). Key Largo (1948), Joan of Lorraine, which became Joan of Arc (1948), The Bad Seed (1956), The Devil's Hornpipe, which became Never Steal Anything Small (1959), and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969). What Price Glory was made into a silent film in 1926 and was remade by John Ford in 1952. Maxwell Anderson published two books of poetry, "You Who Have Dreams" in 1925, and "Notes on a Dream," published posthumously in 1972. Anderson also published two collections of essays, "The Essence of Tragedy and Other Footnotes and Papers" (1939) and "Off Broadway Essays About the Theatre" (1947). His play Both Your Houses won the Pulitzer Prize in 1933 and Winterset and High Tor both won the Drama Critics Circle Award for 1935 & 1937.
The First Flight Theatre Company is devoted to presenting the plays of 20th century American playwright Maxwell Anderson as well as other playwrights who instill poetry in their writing. Saturday’s Children was Anderson’s sixth Broadway production in 1927 & 1928 and ran for 326 performances. The original cast included Ruth Gordon as Bobby and Beulah Bondi as Mrs. Gorlick. Humphrey Bogart joined the cast as Rims O’Neil when the production moved from the Booth to the Forrest Theatre in 1928.
For more about First Flight visit www.firstflighttheatreco.com
Email: firstflight2018@gmail.com
SPECIAL THANKS: FRIGID.NYC and The Ridgewood Arts Foundation for awarding First Flight a sponsorship grant for Autumn 2023.
We wish to express our gratitude to The Performers' Unions: ACTORS' EQUITY ASSOCIATION, AMERICAN GUILD OF MUSICAL ARTISTS, AMERICAN GUILD OF VARIETY ARTISTS and SAG-AFTRA through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the Artists to appear on this program.