LIBRARY NOTES
Kathleen Chalfant
The Party
Monday, November 10, 1997 at 6:00 PM
Union Club, 101 East 69th Street; $15 per person
The Party is an adaptation of three Virginia Woolf stories ("The New Dress", "Together and Apart" and "A Summing Up") by playwright Ellen McLaughlin. Actress Kathleen Chalfant plays three different women at one of Mrs. Dalloway's parties, moving back and forth from one to another and illuminating Woolf's characters with insight, irony, and quiet amusement. As one critic said, "Ms. Chalfant bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Woolf, and one feels this is very close to what we might see if the author could come back and tell the stories herself." Ms. Chalfant met Ms. McLaughlin when they each played multiple roles in Angels in America. The discovery that they both loved the writings of Virginia Woolf set in motion their collaboration, together with director David Esbjornson, to make The Party.
Perhaps best known for her Tony-nominated performance as Hannah Pitt in the Broadway production of Angels in America, Kathleen Chalfant has also had numerous Off-Broadway credits. She is appearing, through November 30, 1997 at New Haven's Long Warf Theatre, in Margaret Edson's Wit, a play about a woman with ovarian cancer. Originally from San Francisco and having lived in Tallahassee, Sacramento, Barcelona, Rome, and Woodstock, Ms. Chalfant now calls New York home. Her husband is a documentary film maker, and they have two grown children.
|