Starring F. Murray Abraham, Mercedes Ruehl, Harris Yulin, Tedra Millan, Josh Gladstone, and Dave Quay.
The legendary cartoonist and playwright celebrates his 90th birthday with a concert reading of his play A Bad Friend, candid conversation, and maybe even a little cake… come celebrate the end of summer with an East End legend!
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F. Murray Abraham
His first job in NY was as a Macy’s Santa, he then replaced in several shows in town: The Fantasticks, Elaine May’s Adaption, and Jules Feifer’s Little Murders; (he will do Rev. Dupas monologue at the drop of a hat.) He’s done a lot of movies and plays and been given some awards: an Oscar, a Golden Globe, the LA Film Critics Award, The John Gielgud Award for Excellence in Shakespeare, The Moscow Art Stanislavski Award, 2 Emmie nominations, 2 OBIEs, and is in the NY Theater Hall of Fame., He was The Mentor, and Tolstoy on the West End, and is the only American actor to have performed Barabas and Shylock in rep, and was Shylock as part of the RSC’s Complete Works Festival in Stratford on Avon, He’s been in 4 of Ethan Cohen’ plays and has done more Terrence McNally plays than any other actor. Recent films and TV include Grand Budapest Hotel, The Isle of Dogs, Inside Llewen Davis, The Good Wife, The Good Fight, Louis CK, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the new Apple series Heros' Quest. He’ll soon be seen as Norman Mailer in an adaptation of recorded conversations between Mailer and his son John Buffalo. His book on A Midsummer Nights Dream is published by Faber and Faber. -
Tedra Millan
Tedra Millan is happy to be teaming up with Harris and Mercedes again after working on Jules Feiffer’s A Bad Friend at Guild Hall last summer. Other theatre credits include: Noel Coward’s Present Laughter (Broadway), Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves (Lincoln Center, Playwrights Realm, New York Stage & Film- Drama Desk and Obie Awards), Jesse Eisenberg‘s Happy Talk (The New Group), Simon Stephens’ On the Shore of the Wide World (Atlantic Theater Company), Annie Baker’s The Flick (Barrow Street). Film/TV: Modern Persuasion (Tangerine Entertainment), “Fosse/Verdon” (FX), “Katy Keene” (CW), “Almost Family” (Fox), “Tales of the City” (Netflix), “The Goldbergs” (ABC). She has a BFA from the University of Michigan and a Masters in Classical Acting from LAMDA.
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Mercedes Ruehl
Mercedes Ruehl has appeared in the films The Fisher King (Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Los Angeles and Chicago Film Critics Association Awards), Married to the Mob, The Warriors, Big, Heartburn, Slaves of New York, Another You, Last Action Hero, Lost in Yonkers, What’s Cooking?, The Amati Girls, Roseanna’s Grave, Chu and Blossom, Zedya and the Hitman, Spooky House, More Dogs Than Bones, and The Minus Man. She has been seen on Broadway in Neil Simon’s Lost in Younkers (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Helen Hayes Awards), The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (Outer Critics Circle Award, Tony nomination), The Rose Tattoo, The Shadow Box (Tony nomination), and I’m Not Rappaport. Her Off Broadway credits include Woman Before a Glass (Obie Award), Other People’s Money (Clarence Derwent Award), The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Obie Award), Coming of Age in Soho, The Vagina Monologues, and Edward Albee’s The Occupant. Ruehl’s television credits include HBO’s Indictment: The McMartin Trial, Gia, Hallmark Hall of Fame’s The Lost Child and Loving Leah, El Jefe, Doubt, Star Spangled Banners, Showtime’s North Shore Fish, Guilt by Association, and A Girl Like Me. She also made guest appearances on Entourage, Law & Order, Monday Mornings, Luck, Psych, and Frasier, among others.
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Harris Yulin
After studying in Los Angeles with the splendid, black-listed actor Jeff Corey, Yulin spent 20 months living in Europe and Israel, dubbing films into English, and performing a night club show with William Burroughs at the Club Montparnasse in Paris.
He made his New York debut in 1963 in James Saunders’ Next Time I’ll Sing To You, with James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons at the Phoenix Theatre. Many plays, Broadway, off-Broadway and elsewhere followed.
Recent appearances: Long Day’s Journey into Night at the Court Theatre, Chicago; Death of a Salesman at the Gate Theatre, Dublin; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Chautauqua Festival, and ever trying to get it right, his third try at Claudius in Hamlet at the Classic Stage Company in New York.
He has appeared in and presented many evenings at Guild Hall including the initial production after the renovation in 2009, The Glass Menagerie with Amy Irving, and last September Are You Now or Have You Ever Been.
His production of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful with Lois Smith and Hallie Foote played an extended run at the Signature Theatre in New York, receiving four Lucille Lortel Awards (Outstanding Lead Actress, Outstanding Featured Actress, Outstanding Production, Outstanding Director), and subsequently moved to The Goodman Theatre, Chicago.
His first film was in 1968, an adaptation by Terry Southern of John Barth’s End of The Road, directed by Adam Avakian with longtime friends James Earl Jones and Stacy Keach. Other fondly remembered but not necessarily widely seen efforts include Candy Mountain directed by Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer; Short History of Decay script by Michael Maren; 75% In July by Hyatt Bass; and more widely seen production including Clear and Present Danger directed by Philip Noyce; and Scarface directed by Brian de Palma.
He has many TV appearances including WIOU, about a CBS newsroom where he played a troubled anchorman; and Mister Sterling, set in the U.S. Senate, written by Lawrence O’Donnell.
He has taught, acted and directed at the Juilliard School for ten years.
He has narrated many films for PBS and others and done extensive work on radio including dramatizations of Ross MacDonald detective novels with casts of fifty subsequently released as audio books as was Norman Mailer’s last novel, The Castle and
the Rock.He has worked in all the venues and mediums available to him, even singing and dancing in John Osborne’s The Entertainer, in which his efforts in these disciplines were properly third-rate.
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Josh Gladstone
Josh Gladstone has served as the Artistic Director of the John Drew Theater since 2000 where in recent seasons he directed Stage Fright, Romeo & Juliet and Extinction by Gabe McKinley. Responding to the pandemic, he produced last year’s John Drew Backyard Theater and John Drew Virtual productions, including Same Time, Next Year starring Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin, and A Totally Disrespectful Evening of Short Plays by Joy Behar. At the Drew he’s produced such plays as Steve Martin’s The Underpants, All My Sons starring Laurie Metcalf and Alec Baldwin; Clever Little Lies starring Marlo Thomas; Tony Walton’s productions of Tonight at 8:30 starring Blythe Danner, Equus starring Alec Baldwin and Moby Dick Rehearsed starring Peter Boyle; The Glass Menagerie directed by Harris Yulin starring Amy Irving; Robert Wilson’s KOOL and Persephone; and The Exonerated starring Mia Farrow. Regional credits: Children’s Theatre Co., Minneapolis; Shakespeare Theatre, DC; Classic Theater International, Germany; The Neo-Political Cowgirls; and four seasons as co-founding Artistic Director of Hamptons Shakespeare Festival. Josh studied at Circle in the Square where he met his wife Kate Mueth.
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Dave Quay
Dave is a New York-based actor, filmmaker, and writer. Most recently, he appeared in Ken Burns' Hemingway as the voice of F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others. He has performed onstage in New York and regionally with theaters including the Public Theater, Lincoln Center, Classic Stage Company, Royal Shakespeare Company, Theatre for a New Audience, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Alliance Theatre, Dorset Theater Festival, and Big Apple Circus. TV/Film credits include "House of Cards," "Gotham," "Blindspot," "Bull," "The Looming Tower," "Royal Pains," and Ben Lewin's Catcher Was a Spy starring Paul Rudd. His directing credits include commercial, documentary, and narrative film, and he has taught and directed at NYU and New York Film Academy. Dave holds an MFA from NYU Graduate Acting.