Philadelphia Theatre Company continues its 45th Anniversary season with a perceptive drama about forgiveness set in Amish Country in Pennsylvania. PTC is thrilled to begin the year with the Philadelphia Premiere of Chelsea Marcantel’s The Kilroys List Honorable Mention pick, Everything is Wonderful. Directed by Noah Himmelstein, who directed this play at the Everyman Theatre in Baltimore last year, this beautiful new work about a nearby community runs February 14-March 8, 2020. Opening Night is February 19 at 7 p.m. Press are invited to review that performance or any after. Tickets cost $30-$59. Tickets are available at philatheatreco.org, at the box-office, or by calling 215-985-0420. All shows are performed at Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre (480 S. Broad Street).

“I saw our director Noah Himmelstein's production at the Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, which was rendered so beautifully and I just found it so moving, it took my breath away,” said PTC Producing Artistic Director Paige Price. “This is very a "PTC" play. It is very character-driven and lays out clear conflicts for the audience to consider. There are surprising revelations through the course of the play that offer a chance to change one's mind about a character, thus upending who you've been ‘rooting’ for. And the play sneaks up on you...it doesn't feed you everything in an explicit way, making the second half even more impactful.”

Philadelphia Theatre Company, Everything is Wonderful

In this heartfelt new work, an Amish couple exhibits an act of unfathomable forgiveness after their two sons are killed in a car accident. Upholding the tenets of their faith, they take in Eric, the wayward young driver of the car. But the accident brings home their eldest daughter, Miri, who was excommunicated five years earlier, and Eric’s presence cracks open the family’s secret history. As the family struggles to cling to their way of life, they are forced to find a way forward inside their insular community, practicing mercy and forgiveness to heal the wounds of the past.

Everything is Wonderful is directed by Noah Himmelstein, who makes his Philadelphia debut. “I am delighted! I love Philadelphia. My dad grew up here and I am looking forward to spending time in this exciting city. I have loved working with Paige. She has a terrific vision for PTC in the kinds of stories she believes are vital to conversation and community. She has great trust with fellow artists and ideas and I have felt inspired and supported in the design and casting process. I am particularly excited to be directing Everything is Wonderful in Pennsylvania where many of those who come to see it will have traveled to and potentially had relationships within Lancaster and the Amish community,” said Himmelstein.

The cast is made up of local favorites, returning PTC favorites, and actors making their PTC debuts. J. Hernandez, who returns to PTC after performing in Sweat last season, is Eric, the wayward young driver of the car responsible for the death of the family’s sons. He is a multiple Barrymore nominee and this season was a nominee for the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Artist. William Zielinski, an eight-time Barrymore nominee who has been a member of four Barrymore winning ensembles, returns to PTC after appearing in Hand to God to play Jacob, the Patriarch of the family. Philadelphia based actress Stephanie Hodge makes her PTC debut as Ruth. She recently appeared in Hamlet at the Seaport Museum. Lucky Gretzinger makes his PTC debut as Abram. Gretzinger is reprising the role he originated in the show’s world premiere at Contemporary American Theatre Festival. Katie Kleiger is making her Philadelphia Theatre Company debut as Miri. She recently was part of the Helen Hayes Award-winning Ensemble of The Wolves at The Studio Theatre in Washington DC. Recent Philadelphia transplant Blair Sams makes her PTC debut as Esther. She has Broadway and extensive regional credits. She just finished working with Jon Stewart on his upcoming film Irresistible. She has also appeared on Chicago P.D., The Americans, Boardwalk Empire, The Following, Law & Order: SVU, Ed and The Guardian.

Himmelstein brought in three members of the creative team from his Everyman Theatre production of Everything is Wonderful. Daniel Ettinger, Scenic Design; Cory Pattak, Lighting Design; and Pornchanok Kanchanabanca, Sound Designer and Composer are working with Himmelstein for the PTC production. He gave the creative team the goal of creating something handmade, yet ethereal. Ettinger has created a wooden barn structure handed painted to feel like antique furniture. Around the structure will be chairs and objects that can be manipulated by the cast to form different interior spaces with grace and ease.

“This is a community that builds all of their own spaces, grows their own food, serves their neighbors, lives without technology and worships in homes and barns -- not churches. They alternate their worship service at different people’s homes. The play is also very cinematic in that it is continually going from kitchen to barn to a field to other locations within the community and its written in such a way that the scenes often blend into each other, overlap, or happen simultaneously,” said Himmelstein. “Even more miraculously, often the scenes that are overlapping are in the past and juxtaposing what we are seeing in the present.”

Pattak’s the lighting will appear through the slats in the barn to highlight different times of day and the vast rural landscape of the world of this show that is controlled by the sun but also to go back in time. Track lights will swipe and dissolve as scenes or time periods in the show change.

Janus Stefanowicz returns to PTC as Costume Designer for Everything is Wonderful. For PTC she designed Outside Mullingar, Detroit, Tribes, reasons to be pretty, Ruined and Intimate Apparel for which she received the Barrymore Award for Outstanding Costume Design. She is the costume shop manager, resident designer and an adjunct faculty for Villanova University’s Theatre Department.

Thai artist, sound designer, musician and composer, Pornchanok Kanchanabanca is the Sound Designer and is composing Original Music for the show She has worked with theatre companies across the United States including Lincoln Center, OSF, Steppenwolf, McCarter Theater, Rattlestick, Geva Theatre and Milwaukee Repertory Theater, among many others.

Allison Hassman is the Stage Manager. Tori Heikenfeld is the Assistant Stage Manager. Neill Hartley is the Dialect Coach.

“I am fascinated by this community, that in one hand is so spiritually evolved that they shine a light for all of us to embrace forgiveness in our lives and live with a kind of inner spaciousness and presence, and yet is so also deeply intolerant of any subtle shifts in their way of thinking. At the core of this play we have a family who, in the name of their teachings, embrace the man who caused the death of their two boys, yet is unable to accept the pain of their own daughter,” said Himmelstein. “This play deals with a family within a closed religious community following centuries of beliefs that have kept them safe and ensured their survival at a moment when our world and the conversations we are having about consent force them to adjust and see each other anew. That makes for remarkable drama. The structure is also thrilling; the play is told as a kind of mosaic of time that is put together before our eyes which makes for great suspense and theatricality.”

Adds Price, “The play deals with contemporary issues like consent, but also explores timeless issues like family fissures and unmet expectations. The catalyzing event is a car crash where a drunk driver kills the Amish family's two sons. What is unusual is that we spend time in the aftermath with both with the family and the driver of the car. In fact, the play explores how the driver seeks forgiveness from this family and so humanizes both parties in a way that is painfully real and honest. The consent issue in the play is also one of the biggest reasons I feel the play is important now. When the family's oldest daughter experiences an assault that she cannot forgive, she is expelled from the community. In this way, the play explores what happens when the tenets of a faith are at odds with the needs of a young woman who feels violated and then also unsupported. Her sense of betrayal is palpable. Obviously in this #MeToo era, victim-blaming and shaming are a real consequence of the brave acts of women speaking out.”

About the Director: Noah Himmelstein directed Andrew Lippa’s I Am Harvey Milk (Lincoln Center with Kristin Chenoweth; also in San Francisco with Laura Benanti, Los Angeles and Denver: NY Magazine, LA Magazine Critic’s Picks, Playbill's Unforgettable Experience of the Year); I Am Anne Hutchinson (Strathmore with Chenoweth, Washington Post: “Best of the Year."); The Costume (Inner Voices/The Barrow Group); The Forgotten Woman (Bay Street Theatre); Los Otros; The Book of Joseph; and An Inspector Calls (Everyman Theatre). Additional directing: New York Philharmonic; Lincoln Center American Songbook; Weston Playhouse; Goodspeed; Westport Playhouse; American Opera Projects; Fredericia Teater (Denmark). Teaching artist: Broadway Dreams Foundation, Wooran Foundation (Seoul), Fordham, NYU. Asst. Director: Golden Boy (LCT, Broadway). Associate Artistic Director: Everyman Theatre. Upcoming: NY premieres by Michael John LaChiusa and Karen Hartman. Grad of Emerson College.

About the Playwright

Chelsea Marcantel is an LA-based writer, director, and collaborator. Reared by Cajuns in southwest Louisiana, Chelsea has lived and made theatre among the tribes of the Midwest, Appalachia, the Mid-Atlantic, and now the West Coast. In 2016, she completed a Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Fellowship at The Juilliard School. Her plays include Airness, Everything Is Wonderful, Ladyish, Devour, and Tiny Houses. They have been produced around the United States and Canada. Chelsea is an avid self-producer, an enthusiastic member of The Writers Guild of America and The Dramatists Guild, and a newly-minted Kilroy. www.chelseamarcantel.com

Two-play subscriptions are on sale and start at $35. Tickets and subscriptions are available at the box office, online at philatheatreco.org or by phone at 215-985-0420.

The season concludes with Sarah DeLappe’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and 2015 Kilroys List play, The Wolves. This boisterously energetic play about life, love, and loss on and off the field for a high school girls soccer team runs April 10-May 3.

Honorary Producers for Everything is Wonderful are Linda and David Glickstein and Laura and Richard Steel.

PTC’s 2019-2020 season is sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal, Independence Blue Cross, Center City Film & Video, and PNC Arts Alive.

Everything is Wonderful, Philadelphia Theatre Company

ABOUT PHILADELPHIA THEATRE COMPANY

Philadelphia Theatre Company (PTC) is a leading regional theater company that produces, develops, and presents entertaining and imaginative contemporary theater focused on the American experience.

Founded in 1974, PTC has presented 153 world and Philadelphia premieres. More than 50 percent of PTC’s world premieres have moved on to New York and other major cities, helping to earn Philadelphia a national reputation as a hub for new play development. PTC has received more than 180 nominations and 53 awards from the Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre. In 2007, PTC was instrumental in expanding Philadelphia’s thriving cultural corridor by opening the Suzanne Roberts Theatre on the Avenue of the Arts.