The Saintliness of Margery Kemp
by John Wulp
directed by Austin Pendleton
presented by Perry Street Theatricals and Jonathan Demar in association with
Frederick M. Zollo and Diane Procter
with Vance Barton, Latonya Borsay, Timothy Doyle, Michael Genet, Ginger Grace, Andrus Nichols, Jason O’Connell, Pippa Pearthree, Thomas Sommo
set by John Wulp | costumes by Barbara Bell | lighting by Jennifer Tipton and Matt Richards | sound by Ryan Rummery
at the Duke Theatre on 42nd Street, NYC
Wulp’s play tells the story “of a woman who did not want her life to be defined either by men or by the strictures of her society.” John wrote the play in 1958 and it enjoyed a brief run Off Broadway that year with a cast including Frances Sternhagen and Gene Hackman (though John had been forced by the director to make considerable rewrites to the script). In 2018, he approached us with the piece and we helped him to revive the play as he had originally written it from, lo those many years hence.
We enjoyed a nice run at The Duke and we were thrilled to team up again with the marvelous Andrus Nichols, whom we first worked with on Bedlam’s Hamlet and Saint Joan, and Jason O’Connell, who had played the Ferrars brothers double-bill so brilliantly in Bedlam’s Sense & Sensibility. It also afforded me the opportunity to work with Austin Pendleton, someone I had known for years, but we had only done staged readings with up until this point.
The critics were especially kind to both Nichols and O’Connell, The New York Times, noting:
“… these are actors whose names on a cast list are a tipoff: If they’re in it, exciting performances are likely afoot. Ms. Nichols and Mr. O’Connell are delicious to watch… this production gives the impression of a play that has aged into a new resonance.”