school of fine arts eastern illinois university

1 CHARLESTON, ILLINOIS 61920 217/ 581 -3110

DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE ARTS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELASE •• •••••

"Candide," the musical comedy version of Voltaire's satire on Pollyanna-like optimists, will be the next attraction at Eastern Illinois University's Fine Arts Center, where the New York hit will have its mid-west premiere. "Candide" will open on Friday, June 2$ at 8 p.m. in the Playroom and continue June 26, July 2 & 3 at 8 ~.m. with one Sunday matinee, June 27 at 2 p.m.

The show has a musical score by Leonard Bernstein, composer of "West Side Story" and former conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and his music is set to lyrics by Richard Wilbur, Pulitzer Prize winning poet and author of this century's most applauded verse translations of Moliere plays. Votaire's sardonic story, a classic since he wrote it in 1758, has been adapted for song-and-dance purposes by Hugh Wheeler, adaptor of the musical success "A Little Night Music."

"Candide" was originally, and remains in this musical version, a "picaresque novel" in reverse. In picaresque novels a hero fearlessly rushes from one hazardous adventure to another, rescuing lovely damsels from wicked villains by his audacity and the skill of his swordsmanship. Candide is no such dashing fellow.

He is kidnapped, shanghaied and dragged unwillingly from one horrifying adventure to the next, and he wins no battles. When in one episode he vanquishes an opponent with a sword he unwillingly has picked up, he is overwhelmed with remorse, mournfully crying out "Alas that I, a harmless fellow, have killed a man."

Having been taught by the learned Dr. Pangloss that this is "the best of all possible worlds," Candide is continually being surprised by the frightful injustices and miseries he encounters.

These range from the mass rape of his sweetheart, Cunegonde, by a regiment of Bulgarian soldiers, to theif being engulfed in wars and enslaved by pirates who capture their ship on the high seas, from oppressi6nnby high officials of the Inquisition, to nature's massive attacks on the happiness of humanity, such as the Lisbon earthquake.

Candide goes from one kind of mass slaughter and vicious enslavement to another -- always bouncing back from these disasters with his master's assurance that this is really "the best of all possible worlds." He remains an indefatigable optimist, or just plain fool, in the face of the evidence. Wolcott Gibbs called Candide

-2-

"one of the great imbeciles of literature." This perpetual Victim did not, as might have been

expected, evoke tn~ypity and compassion of audiences during the successful long run of "Candide" in New York. Instead, audiences found oCandide's catastrophes hilarious. It was a reminder of how the immortal Charlie Chaplin roused his endless laughter by always pluckily, if rather dazedly, picking himself up after being knocked down, and Candide does the same.

Terry Kelly will play this guileless hero at the University Theatre and Deborah Timblin will appear as his equally innocent, though often-ravished sweetheart. Cunegonde. Michael Boyll will have the show's next most important role -- or rather collection of roles, for he will not merely double, he will quintuple as Voltaire himself, as the hypocritical Dr. Pangloss, as a lascivious South American governor, as a host at a sadistic dinner party, and finally as the sage who gives Candide the formula for finding happiness.

Vicki Jackson will have the role of a dauntless Old Lady who has suffered almost as many punishments as Candide. Mary Anne Barlow and Robert Biggs will appear as another pair from Candide's home country of Westphalia, who share many of his calamities in wanderings across Europe and Soth America. ~r Twelve others will be in the cast, performing the parts of soldiers, priests, strumpets, aristocrats, inquisitors, sailors, pirates, eunuchs, and other species in the Voltaire zoo.

E.G. Gabbard is the director who is giving pace and style to this musical that comes to the University Theatre's Playroom with the warranty of an enormously successful run in Naw York of 740 performances over 22 months in 1974 and 1975, and C.P. Blanchette is design­ing the show's scenery. Delbert Simon and Alice Stoughton are the show's musical director and cho~eographer, re~pectively, and Nancy Paule is designing the costumes.

Tickets for "Candide" will be available beginning Monday, June 21 at the Fine Arts Ticket Office. The ticket office will be open from 1-5 p.m. daily, Monday-Friday and tickets are $2.50 for adults. $1.50 for youth and $1.00 for EIU students. There are no reserved seats, but reservations can be made by phoning 581-3110.

-30-