The Long Red Road Rehearsal Began Today!

In this raw, provocative world premiere, Sam attempts to drink away his past and exorcise his demons on an Indian reservation in South Dakota, where he has been trying to forget his role in a tragic accident involving his family. When a visitor from his past arrives on the reservation, Sam is forced to face his guilt and to take a harrowing look at the man he has become.

Rehearsals began TODAY!

Want to see more photos of the talented cast in rehearsal? Click here.

Why The Long Red Road?

Posted by Artistic Director Robert Falls

Few new plays have moved me as profoundly or touched me as deeply as Brett C. Leonard’s The Long Red Road. With unflinching and sometimes savage honesty, Brett explores the deeply fractured relationship of two brothers, each of whom has spent years dealing with the aftermath of a horrific accident. Without denying the very real flaws that infect many of the play’s characters, Brett is able to take us beyond their sometimes violent exteriors to explore their achingly vulnerable humanity. Alternately shocking and poetic, The Long Red Road is a stunningly affecting work, one that I have wanted to bring to the Owen stage since I first encountered it nearly two years ago.

Chicago last experienced Brett’s compelling work in 2005 when his play Guinea Pig Solo received rave reviews from critics, who hailed him as “a passionately engaged writer with a poetic soul, a gift for bristling dialogue, a pitch-black comic sensibility and an almost Orwellian view of the world” (Chicago Sun-Times). Like Guinea Pig Solo, The Long Red Road comes to us from the LAByrinth Theatre Company in New York, an off-Broadway theater that has become the artistic home of such other extraordinary writers as José Rivera, Stephen Adly Guirgis and John Patrick Shanley. Early in his LAByrinth tenure, Brett began a close working relationship with company member Philip Seymour Hoffman, who directed the first reading of The Long Red Road several years ago. Phil has remained an important part of the development of the play ever since, as has Tom Hardy, one of London’s most electrifying acting talents, for whom Brett created the central role of Sammy. I am extremely pleased that all three of these artists are part of this premiere production, joined by an outstanding group of actors and designers from around the country.

As I have often said, I strongly feel that new works are the lifeblood of any theater company. I am proud indeed to add Brett C. Leonard’s The Long Red Road to the distinguished list of plays that have gotten their start at Goodman Theatre.

Robert Falls
Artistic Director

We hope you are as excited as we are about The Long Red Road! Please share your questions and comments with us, below.

We Want to Hear from YOU!

Happy New Year from Goodman Theatre!

With the beginning of 2010, we are inspired to reflect on the last 12 months and welcome growth and change in the new year. Fittingly, the next production on the Goodman stage—a double bill of Hughie and Krapp’s Last Tape starring Brian Dennehy—deals with the theme of self-reflection.

In O’Neill’s Hughie, the high-rolling gambler Erie struggles to redefine his identity after his confidante passes away. In Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, the title character Krapp has a birthday tradition. Every year, he records the important—and the banal—moments of the last year. As he prepares to record a new tape on his 69th birthday, he begins to listen to his archives and reflect on his life.

Robert Falls, Goodman Artistic Director and director of Hughie shares his thoughts about the power of reflection and wants YOU to join the conversation:

Although Hughie and Krapp’s Last Tape are stylistically very different, they share a great many themes and characteristics—not the least of which is the nature of personal reflection. In each play, the central character spends a great deal of time and energy recalling the past, either through the stories that Erie Smith relates in Hughie or through Krapp’s examination of audio tapes from his past. In each case, these ruminations simultaneously celebrate the glories of the past and mourn their loss, making the act of reflection both comforting and painful. This is, I think, the nature of reflection and the source of its power: by revisiting the past, we not only experience again the joys and sorrows that we find there, but use those memories to measure how far we have come—however joyful or difficult that journey might have been.
—Robert Falls, Goodman Theatre Artistic Director


We want to know: How do you revisit the past, and by which moments do you measure how far you have come? Post a comment below to share your story.