A Beautiful End
Book, Music and Lyrics by Christian Duhamel
Directed by Joseph Bates
October 22-24, 2009 in the A.U. Theatre Upstairs

The newest musical by a talented young composer, A Beautiful End explores the lives of two feisty women who worked as dancers and burlesque performers in the late 1800s and a young composer in the present day who is trying to find his voice in the theatre world. Set in an empty a theatre in Spokane, Washington, these three engaging characters struggle to come to terms with the past, present, and future as the young composer returns home after an unsuccessful attempt at life in Seattle, and the two dancers rehearse for the performance of their lives.
"I have a fascination with time,' says Mr. Duhamel, "the way we swim through it, forget about it, and every so often, make the most of it."

Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel won the 2004 New York Drama Critics Circle and the Outer Critics Circle Awards. Set in New York City in 1905, Intimate Apparel examines the strains that human-created boundaries (class, racial, ethnic, and religious) place on love through the quest of the central character, Esther, to find love and fulfillment. As a 35-year-old African American seamstress known for sewing exquisite corsets, Esther moves fluidly between many different worlds: the boudoirs of both a wealthy white woman and an African American musician who relies on prostitution to pay the bills; the tenement storefront of a Jewish fabric merchant; and the boardinghouse for unmarried women in which she lives. She finds tenderness and anguish in unlikely places, and uncovers confidence and strength in her ability to deal with both. Intimate Apparel contains adult images and situations.

Brighton Beach Memoirs chronicles a few crucial days in the life of young Eugene Morris Jerome -- baseball fan, aspiring writer, and post pubertal narrator of this story about a first generation Jewish American family struggling to make ends meet in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach neighborhood during the height of the Great Depression. Winner of three Tonys and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Brighton Beach Memoirs is playwright Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical tribute to the power of family bonds in the midst of crisis. The Jerome family, writes Time magazine's T.E. Kalem, "meets challenges with such enormous spirit, dignity and vigor that life—at once humorous and poignant—is something to celebrate."