Max von Essen
Mark Evans
Celebrating its 16th season, the critically-acclaimed Ensemble for the Romantic Century (ERC) returns to BAM Fisher with a two-week run of The Dreyfus Affair – Thursday, April 27-Sunday, May 7, 2017, at 7:30 p.m., Matinee shows April 29-30 & May 6-7 at 2:00 p.m.
The Dreyfus Affair, written by Eve Wolf and directed by Donald T. Sanders, is a multi-media production illuminating the controversial story of the 1894 treason conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus that had a decades-long reverberation in the political landscape of France and the rest of the world.
Featuring Max von Essen (Tony Nominee for An American in Paris) in the title role of Alfred Dreyfus and Mark Evans (Irish Rep’s Finian’s Rainbow) as his devoted brother Mathieu Dreyfus, this tragic tale of intrigue, undying love, conspiracy, and political will is brought to life through the fusion of drama, history, and music.
The Dreyfus Affair evolved around the false arrest and imprisonment of the innocent Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), a highly decorated French Jewish officer. Traumatic soul-searching ensued and French society erupted into a fireball of anti-Semitism and political partisanship that called into question the very nature of French identity. “The Dreyfus Affair is a symbol of injustice,” says Eve Wolf, Founder and Executive Director of ERC and author of The Dreyfus Affair. “It spectacularly exposed the virulent right-wing forces in French society — forces that can be traced down to our own day, and not only in France. Yet the heart of this story is not the injustice itself, but the moving fact that people of character and fortitude — Émile Zola, Georges Piquart, and the Dreyfus family — risked their lives, careers, and fortunes to get to the truth. They never gave up or gave in, and this is perpetually relevant.”
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space), 321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY.
Tickets: 718.636.4100 or BAM.org/music/2017/the-dreyfus-affair.
