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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b>Ohio Shakespeare Festival
presents<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b>Richard Figge in <i>Barrymore's
Ghost</i><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b>at Coach House Theatre
in Akron<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>
Actor Richard Figge will perform Jason Miller's one-man play <i>Barrymore's
Ghost</i>, directed by Nancy Cates, and presented by Ohio Shakespeare Festival
at Coach House Theatre, opening tonight, Halloween, at 8pm. Additional
performances are Saturday, November 1 at 8pm, and Sunday, November 2, at
2:30pm.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'>Tickets are $10 for theatre only,
or $25 for dinner (or brunch) and theatre, with dinner prior to the
performances at the adjacent Akron Woman’s City Club. Coach House
and the City Club are located at 732 W. Exchange St., at the intersection of N.
Portage Path and Exchange. For reservations or ticket information, call
Ohio Shakespeare Festival at 330-673-8761. <a
href="http://www.ohioshakespeare.com">www.ohioshakespeare.com</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>
John Barrymore (1882-1942) was perhaps the most famous member of a theatrical
dynasty. John, his brother Lionel, and his sister Ethel were known as the
"Royal family of the American theater." John's granddaughter
Drew continues that acting tradition in our own day.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>
The play opens up the life of the legendary John Barrymore in a unique and
theatrical manner. Mr. John Barrymore, or Jack Barrymore or Jake
Barrymore, is presented as a ghost haunting an unknown theater, which, at the
moment, is in rehearsal for a play. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>
The gods have sentenced Barrymore to this purgatorial existence as penance for
his abandonment of the theater and the squandering of his talents, in the
pursuit of fame, greed, and dissipation. Barrymore disputes these assertions
of the gods as he painfully and humorously examines the spectrum of his
life. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>
He chronicles his ascendancy to the throne as the finest classical actor of his
generation; his arrival to the pinnacle of movie stardom; his intimate and compassionate
relationships to his sister Ethel and his brother Lionel; and the explosive
debacles of his four marriages. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>
The play has wit, terror, agony and hope, as we watch a mythological character
explore the truths and deceptions of his extraordinary life.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>
Richard Figge is a character actor whose credits range from Prospero in
Shakespeare's <i>The Tempest</i> and Rostand's <i>Cyrano de Bergerac</i> to
modern comedy and drama. He is best known for his one-man performance as
Clarence Darrow, with which he has toured in the United States and Europe and
which he presented in 1985, under the sponsorship of President Reagan, in
Washington, D. C. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'>
He has toured in productions of <i>Mass Appeal</i> and <i>Love Letters. </i>In
1997 he toured with Vincent Dowling, portraying President Theodore Roosevelt to
Mr. Dowling's John Muir in Phyllis Webster's new play <i>John and Teddy. </i>In
April of 1998 he returned to Wooster to play Prospero in Shakespeare's <i>The
Tempest. </i>Mr. Figge has experience in film and has made many radio and
television commercials.<i> </i>He has performed in special broadcasts on
public radio and can be heard as the narrator on the CD, <i>Visions of Souls:
The Joshua L. Chamberlain Story. </i> He has narrated <i>Peter and
the Wolf </i>with the Wooster Symphony Orchestra and was a narrator for a
performance of Stravinsky's <i>Soldier's Tale </i>with the Charlottesville
(Virginia) Symphony. He has recently appeared as Joe Keller in the Weathervane
Community Playhouse’s production of Arthur Miller’s <i>All My Sons</i>
under the direction of Nancy Cates and as Polonius in the Ohio Shakespeare
Festival’s 2008 production of <i>Hamlet,</i> directed by Terry Burgler.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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