Celebrate Broadway's Most Wanted With Mauritius

By Author: Al Terry
Total Articles: 781
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Mauritius seems to be the new buzzword on Broadway this season and it's easy to see why. The play is a delightfully dark comedy, an original play appearing for the first time from a young woman, who has already made quite a mark on the stage. Perhaps best of all, this play boasts of a luscious cast, just waiting to sink their teeth into the meat of this play.

Meet Theresa Rebeck

For those of you, who know a little about the theater scene, the name Theresa Rebeck will be a familiar one. She entered the scene in 1992, with her first production Spike Heels and quickly made a name for herself with other pieces like, The Scene, Bad Dates, The Water's Edge and then with her Pulitzer finalist Omnium Gatherum. Rebeck remembers how the actor Kevin Bacon advised her that, if you stick around long enough, people would start to respect you. And that's just what she has done.

Rebeck seems to have won that respect hands-down with Mauritius, which is not only her Broadway debut, it is the only original play by a woman to debut on the stage this season. Rebeck has dabbled extensively in the world of writing- she's penned ...
... a few pilot episodes for television and even wrote for NYPD Blue for a while. She has also written a novel and a collection of her plays are due to be published soon.

A Thriller about Stamps?

It might seem odd that, Rebeck's Broadway debut should be about something as mundane as stamps, but in her hands, stamps become the core issue in a play that is filled with plenty of comedy and thrills. The story revolves around two half sisters, who have recently lost their mother. On going through her possessions, they discover a rare collection of precious stamps. The question immediately arises as to who the stamps belong to. But before the sisters can even begin to sort that out, three desperate stamp collectors descend on them, eager to get their hands on the collection. For the sisters, it all comes down to the question about what they value more- the stamps or their relationship.

The debut cast for Mauritus is nothing to sneeze at- Bobby Cannavale, who recently won an Emmy for his work in the sitcom Will & Grace, plays one of the stamp collectors. Tony award winning actor Katie Finneran, who also made a name for herself in the television show Wonderfalls, plays one of the sisters. Alison Pill, Dylan Baker, and F. Murray Abraham round off this truly stellar cast.

Mauritus is an interesting play with regard to the majority of Rebeck's work. Like the characters in many of her other plays, the characters in Mauritius are rather poorly behaved, all driven by this desperation to have the stamp collection. Rebeck stumbled on the idea while surfing the Internet and learning how obsessive philately could be, the irony being that in reality, they are nothing more than little pieces of paper. Getting tickets to this show might involve standing in line, so if you want to beat all that, you can get in touch with an authorized ticket vendor and order your Mauritius tickets online.