Center for the literary arts in New York State
"The True" opens on Friday, April 1 at Capital Repertory Theatre.
The production features Broadway and television veterans, Antoinette LaVecchia and Michael Pemberton as Polly Noonan and Erastus Corning 2nd, with Kevin McGuire as Charlie Ryan, David Kenner as Howard C. Nolan, Jack Mastrianni as Bill McCormick, Yvonne Perry as Betty Corning, and and Wynn Harmon as Peter Noonan.
To purchase tickets, visit capitalrep.org Show dates: April 1-24.
“It is, after all, Polly who has the gift — the gift we associate with certain leaders — of connecting to the emotion beneath the policy and the people behind the vote. (“A machine doesn’t care,” she says. “A machine doesn’t have heart.”) And it’s she who has the harder job, like Ginger Rogers, of doing everything the men do but backward and in heels."
-- Jesse Green, New York Times review of "The True"
Dramatizing Albany Politics: Polly Noonan and Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd
7 p.m. Monday, March 21, 2022
Sharr White on 'The True'
Conversation/Q&A with Maggie Mancinelli-Cahill and Paul Grondahl
Capital Repertory Theatre
251 N Pearl Street
Albany NY 12207-2208
Free and open to the public, but registration is required.
All attendees will be required to wear a mask. COVID guidelines at theRep.
Join us Monday, March 21, for a discussion of "The True," which is making its Albany debut on Friday, April 1, Capital Rep theatre in Albany.
Playwright Sharr White, Capital Rep Artistic Director Maggie Mancinelli-Cahill, and Writers Institute Director Paul Grondahl will discuss the makings of the play, its Albany roots, and its explorations of the bounds of love, loyalty, and female power in the male-dominated world of Albany “machine politics.”
The play portrays political operative Polly Noonan and her relationship with Albany’s “mayor for life,” Erastus Corning 2nd, as they wage a battle for control of the city’s Democratic Party against upstarts and progressives in the 1970s.
Directed by Scott Elliott, the 2018 off-Broadway premiere of "The True" starred Edie Falco as Polly Noonan and Michael McKean as Albany Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd. A WNYC review praised "The True":
White doesn't gesture toward current politics, but he doesn't have to. This play, about a moment in time when perceptions of the machine were starting to change, is still deeply relevant in an era when Albany corruption continues to be uncovered. It is also an extraordinary portrait of a woman who, in a different time, may have — like her granddaughter [US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand] — become a political leader herself.
Sharr White’s other Broadway plays include "The Other Place" (2012), starring Laurie Metcalf and Daniel Stern, which received its world premiere Off-Broadway at the MCC Theatre, and subsequently received its Broadway premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club.
"The Snow Geese" (2013), premiered on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre starring Mary Louise Parker, Victoria Clark and Danny Burstein. He has also produced and written for several television series, including “Generation,” “Halston,” Sweetbitter” and “The Affair.”
Maggie Mancinelli-Cahill, Producing Artistic Director of Capital Rep since 1995, has worked on and off Broadway and in numerous regional theatres, directing more than 100 productions. She is the recipient of the Norman E. Rice Award for Excellence in Arts Education, Distinguished Leadership Award from the National Chamber of Commerce, and was named a Woman of Excellence by the Albany-Colonie Chamber of Commerce.
Presented in partnership with Capital Repertory Theatre.
Paul Grondahl, Director of the NYS Writers Institute, is an author and an award-winning journalist who worked at the Albany Times Union for 32 years, starting in 1984. He wrote the biography Mayor Corning: Albany Icon, Albany Enigma (1997). His other books include I Rose like a Rocket: The Political Education of Theodore Roosevelt (2004), and with Suzanne Lance, he co-edited Bootlegger of the Soul: The Literary Legacy of William Kennedy (2018).