DIRECTED BY STUART BOUSEL SETS & LIGHTING BY QUINN J. WHITAKER STAGE MANAGER AMY LIZARDO RYAN COSTUMES BY KIRA SHAW
DECEMBER 2-18 THURSDAY/ FRIDAY/ SATURDAY 8:00pm
STAGE WERX 533 Sutter Street San Francisco
Bay Area Critics' Circle Award-Winning Actress Gwyneth Richards stars in this new play for the Holidays. From the seashell set on the piano,the ocean calls out to Ruth, a feisty mid-western grandmother whose preparations for one more Christmas are interrupted by news that she probably won't see the coming spring. Preferring madcap adventure over chemo, she grabs all the hard liquor, drains her bank account, and convinces her rehab skipping dope fiend grandson to embark on a cross-country trek to find the shore-side contentment of her youth, one last time. Though at opposite ends of the spectrum, old lady and aging hipster (all-the-time pursued by Ruth's no-nonsense daughter-in-law, her over-protective ex, and a down-and-out Dolly Parton impersonator) find themselves bonding in unexpected ways even as Ruth inevitably drifts into death. Never maudlin, never predictable, RUTH AND THE SEA turns the American Christmas Story on its ear, re-inventing its own archetypes and eschewing holiday schmaltz as it takes the audience on a search for nothing less than the meaning of life.
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