THEATRE + COMEDY

Black Box Productions at the Country Playhouse (voted through Houston Community Newspapers as Best Community Theatre of 2010) presents The Retreat from Moscow by William Nicholson, running from October 14 to 29, 2011, with Rachel Anne Mattox directing.

A thirty-something man juggles the youthful aspirations of his aging father, his mother's dramatics and his own guilt amidst the emotional fallout at the end of his parents’ three-decade long marriage.

Edward and Alice have been married for thirty-three years. He is a teacher at a boys’ school and is happiest working on his daily crossword or with his nose in a book – currently a solemn tome about Napoleon’s abortive invasion of Moscow. She is an observant Catholic, exacting and opinionated, and has been collecting poems about lost love for a new anthology. Jamie is visiting for the weekend. Edward, in the spirit of honesty come what may, announces he has met another woman…..

“A finely perceptive, eloquently tender and exquisite new play.” —John Simon, New York Post
“Riveting. . . . Subtle and powerful, [with] marvelous emotional complexity.” —John Lahr, The New Yorker
“A tense family drama. Spare, emotionally brutal.” —Time Out New York
“A truly devastating piece of theater.” —New York Daily News
“The best new play in twenty years. This perfectly written masterwork shimmers with delicacy and precision.” —The Journal News

A native of Lewes, Sussex, William Nicholson was raised in Gloucestershire. Educated at Downside School, Somerset, and Christ’s College, Cambridge, he was ten when he decided he wanted to become a writer. His wife, Virginia, is also a writer. Her grandmother was Vanessa Bell and great-aunt, Virginia Woolf (part of the Bloomsbury set) and her father, Quentin Bell, is an art historian.

Nicholson was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play for both Shadowlands and The Retreat from Moscow.