Date: Sep 21, 2011

"The Marriage of Bette and Boo"

Christopher Durang’s Bittersweet, Autobiographical Play Opens Sept. 30

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY … Hofstra University’s Department of Drama and Dance presents Christopher Durang’s 1985 masterpiece, The Marriage of Bette and Boo. The play is, in fact, autobiographical – about Durang’s parents, their failed marriage and the universe of eccentrics who revolve around them. Director Royston Coppenger writes, The Marriage of Bette and Boo differs from Durang’s earlier works in its “sweetness, the playwright’s nostalgia for the dream of a perfect life that first brought his parents together, the gentleness and understanding he brings to his cast of exaggerated, desperately incapable characters.”

Widely considered one of Durang’s finest plays, The Marriage of Bette and Boo won four Obie awards upon its initial production at the New York Shakespeare Festival. In reviewing the play for USA Today, Linda Winer wrote that “Christopher Durang has been the wicked and wonderful kid cartoonist of the modern theatre for a while. Now he is one of the masters . . . wicked, wonderful and cartoony. Bette and Boo is both demented and compassionate. And wise, hysterical and incredibly sad. There is not a false note or extra word.”

Performances are Friday, September 30 and October 7, 8 p.m.; Saturday, October 1 and 8, 8 p.m.; Sunday, October 2 and 9, 2 p.m.; and Thursday, October 6, 8 p.m. Location is Hofstra University’s Emily and Jerry Spiegel Theater, California Avenue, South Campus.

Tickets are $10, $8 senior citizen (over 65) or matriculated non-Hofstra student with ID. Members of the Hofstra community receive up to two tickets free upon presentation of a current HofstraCard. For tickets and more information call the Hofstra Box Office at 516-463-6644, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-3:45 p.m.

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