The Angel Capone
by David Copelin
Admission by donation at the door.
Masks required, Vaccine card and photo ID required
Note: All staff and actors are vaccinated
50% capacity seating
Featuring Amy King, Wanda Nowicki, Kevin Crofton, Patrick Visser, Ryan Peters and Steve Schwabl
From his Alcatraz prison, gangster AL CAPONE tells us how he became an angel. No, not the kind of angel with wings and a harp; the theatrical kind. We meet LENORE SHLEMANSKY, a young, ambitious New York actress, and her disapproving mother ANNA. Lenore has a day job assisting amateur magician SAUL ROSEN in his funeral home, and although they are attracted to each other, Lenore ends up quitting her job to audition for Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies under her new stage name, LAURA SEYMOUR. She gets hired, then fired. In her next job as producer HAMILTON PRESCOTT’s secretary, Laura starts writing a play, set in revolutionary Russia, for herself to star in! Then Hamilton gives Laura a role in a show he’s producing in Chicago. That show is a hit, and so is Laura! Her biggest fan? Al Capone! When Hamilton declines to produce Laura’s play, she convinces Capone to invest in it. Needing more money, Laura also gets the lovelorn Saul to invest. Laura decides to produce and direct Romance and Revolution as well as play the leading role! Will her show be a hit? Or a flop? And if it’s a flop, what might a certain ruthless “angel” do?
David Copelin
“I’m a playwright, translator, and occasional dramaturg, now living in Gibsons. My comedy Bella Donna (about the real Lucrezia Borgia) won the New Play Award at the 2005 Toronto Fringe Festival; it has since been staged in Toronto and St. John’s, NL. My other produced comedies include A Clean Breast, Coming Up for Air, Mind Over Matter, and Wife Insurance. Ubu Rex, my translation of Alfred Jarry’s infamous Ubu Roi, has been produced at the Shaw Festival, the Yale Repertory Theatre, and many universities in Canada and the U.S. John Van Burek and I co-translated Carl Sternheim’s Citizen Schippel for the Pleiades Theatre in Toronto. Previously, I worked as a dramaturg at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and New Dramatists in New York City. Trained at the Yale School of Drama, I’m a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, the Dramatists Guild of America, and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. My plays are represented by Michael Petrasek at Kensington Literary in Toronto.”