Hurricane Matthew has forced the cancellation of the City Repertory Theatre production of “The Mystery of Irma Vep.” The 1984 comedy-mystery by Charles Ludlam was scheduled to run Oct. 21-30 at City Rep’s performance space in City Marketplace in Palm Coast.
“The loss of power and rehearsal time makes it impossible to produce the quality of production that CRT audiences have come to expect,” said the show’s director and CRT board president Julia Davidson Truilo. “It was more important that we ensured the safety of our cast and crew and allowed them time to deal with the storm and its wake.”
“We’re on such a tight schedule,” said City Rep co-founder John Sbordone. “We felt in order to get this ready we’d have to rush it so badly the quality would suffer.”
Sbordone said CRT’s venue on the second story of City Marketplace had weathered Hurricane Matthew: “I checked out the theater – it looked like it survived.”
Patrons who purchased single-performance tickets will be given refunds. Season ticket-holders will be able to use their “Irma Vep” tickets to attend a performance of A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” in February. That show, a fundraiser for CRT, was not included in the 2016-17 subscription package. The theater will be contacting season ticket-holders by phone over the next week to arrange their new dates.
Patrons also will have the option of donating the “Irma Vep” portion of their season ticket back to the theater.
“The Mystery of Irma Vep” follows the escapades of a vampire, a werewolf, an Egyptian princess and other characters as the play pokes campy fun at the penny dreadful, those pulp magazines of Victorian Britain that showcased sensational fiction about criminals and supernatural creatures. The play features a two-person cast who portray eight characters with more than two dozen costume changes.
Truilo hopes the off-beat comedy will be rescheduled for next year.
“It’s such a fun play — it’s great for Halloween,” Truilo said. “Halloween will come again next year and I hope we’ll try it then.”
The CRT season will resume on Nov. 13 with a staged reading of “The Rainmaker,” N. Richard Nash’s 1954 comedy-drama about Lizzie, a plain woman on the edge of spinsterhood, and her family in a Depression-era Texas town.
For more information or to purchase tickets, call the City Rep box office at 386-585-9415 or go online at crtpalmcoast.com.
