October 20, 2009, Yarmouth, Maine: Lifetime Associate Director of the Abbey Theatre of Dublin Vincent Dowling brings his production of "The Rivalry" by Norman Corwin to Yarmouth High School's Performing Arts Center, 286 West Elm Street, Yarmouth, on Thursday, November 5 at 7:30 p.m. The production is made possible by North Yarmouth Academy (NYA) and Yarmouth High School (YHS). Tickets are $5 (students and adults), the Box Office doors open at 6:00 p.m., and the theatre doors open at 7:00 p.m. This same production with the same actors playing Abraham Lincoln (Christian Kauffmann), Stephen Douglas (Peter Cormican), and his young wife Adele (Mary Linda Rapelye) received rave reviews by critics in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, to name a few. Originally planned for a two-week run this year in mid-May in New York, the run was extended to ten weeks ending in July.
The play is a dramatization of the famous 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates where two of the nation's most charismatic orators shared a podium to debate issues that would hypnotize the nation. These debates covered a variety of issues, including the conflict between the rights of states and the concept of individual human rights, a conflict which is still very much at work today. Douglas fought for the rights of the separate states to determine the question of slavery, and Lincoln fought for equality of human beings and the conviction that the nation could not endure half slave, half free conditions. Mrs. Douglas serves as both narrator and performer in the play, and throughout the production personal issues as well political ones are developed. "The Rivalry" is both an extraordinary work of dramatic art and a captivating history lesson that is timely even today.
What the Critics Have to Say
June 2009:
"Mr. Kauffmann's Lincoln is recognizably human, and even when he's flinging great shafts of rhetoric across the platform, he still seems a small town lawyer who has been ennobled by fate...To watch Vincent Dowling's pleasantly old-fashioned staging of 'The Rivalry' is to be catapulted back to an unimaginable time when attention spans were longer and politicians more articulate." Wall Street Journal - Terry Teachout
"Compelling Theatre. Fine Performances." The New York Times - Neil Genzingler
"'The Rivalry' is a powerful reminder that politics matter." NY Post - Frank Scheck
Endorsed by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission of Massachusetts.
For more information, contact NYA at 207-846-9051. Tickets will be sold at the door beginning at 6:00 p.m. the day of the show only. There will also be a special performance for NYA and Yarmouth High School students at 12:20 p.m. on November 5 that is free of charge.
North Yarmouth Academy is an independent, college preparatory, coeducational day school serving students in grades 5 through 12 . NYA is dedicated to fostering integrity, character and intellect in young adults.
For more information, please contact:
Kristi Belesca
Director of Community Development and Communications
North Yarmouth Academy
148 Main Street
Yarmouth, ME 04096
207-846-2380 ext. 9305
kbelesca@nya.org