Opened February 3, 2007
Ray Bradbury's Leviathan '99
Written by Ray Bradbury, directed by Alan Neal Hubbs.
Presented by Ray Bradbury’s Pandemonium Theatre Company
Unlike most of Ray Bradbury’s plays, “Leviathan ‘99” was originally created for the stage, and not based on any of his earlier short stories or novels. The first version of this play debuted in Hollywood in 1974, starred the late great William Marshall, and was nearly 3 ½ hours long.
More recently, Ray revisited, reworked and workshopped the piece. The new version of the work that emerged clocked in at a very watchable 75 minutes. Following the workshop in North Hollywood, the new “Leviathan ‘99” had its World Premiere in Alabama, produced there by longtime Bradbury artistic associate Terry Pace. The February 2007 engagement at the Fremont Centre Theatre marks this new version’s West Coast Premier.e
How to describe “Leviathan ‘99”? Imagine “Moby Dick” in outer space, with a mono maniacal starship captain (blind instead of peg-legged) and his crew chasing a runaway killer comet rather than a whale, and you’ll have a fair idea.
The Captain has been obsessed for decades with exacting vengeance on the comet that burned his eyes. But does Comet Leviathan actually threaten the survival of Earth? It’s no accident that Bradbury would write such a play. America’s beloved storyteller cites as his two primary literary influences William Shakespeare and Herman Melville. In fact, Ray wrote the screenplay for the 1956 motion picture of “Moby Dick” directed by John Huston and starring Gregory Peck.
STARRING:
- Simon Russell (The Captain)
- David Mauer (Ishmael),
- Grady Hutt
- Michael Prichard,
- Patrick Skelton
- Philip Sokolofy
- Paul Bond
- Emmett McGuire
