That Woman: Rebecca West Remembers

A new play by Carl Rollyson, Anne Bobby & Helen Macleod
Starring Anne Bobby
Directed by David Drake

Playing at manhattantheatresource ( 177 MacDougal Street, NYC) March 3-13

NEW YORK, February 1 – Paul Lucas and The International Rebecca West Society today announced the premiere of That Woman: Rebecca West Remembers, a one woman play based on the life of celebrated writer and critic Dame Rebecca West. Performances will begin on Wednesday, March 3, and run through Saturday, March 13, 2004. Opening Night will take place on Saturday, March 6 at 9 pm.

That Woman, featuring veteran actress Anne Bobby, explores the intriguing life of a woman described in a 1947 Time magazine cover story as “indisputably the world’s No. 1 woman writer,” and by Virginia Woolf as “a cross between a gypsy and a charwoman.” The play touches on both the public and the private life of West, particularly the stormy relationships with her lover H.G. Wells, their son Anthony, and her husband Henry.

Told largely in West’s own words, the play’s action spans one of the most interesting lives of the 20th century. West was a fearless commentator on the historically and socially volatile events of her 90-year life – a life that began when Queen Victoria was on the throne, and ended with Boy George on top of the charts. Suffragette, single mother, denouncer of Stalin, and the lover of such luminaries as Charlie Chaplin, John Gunther, Max Beaverbrook and Francis Biddle, West was one of the most acute and harsh critics of twentieth century matters. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, her ground-breaking masterpiece of political analysis and personal impressions of Yugoslavia, remains the definitive work about the still-roiling region.