See Former French Vogue Editor Star in New Play at the Frick

 

The Fragonard Room at the Frick Museum, one of the rooms in which the play will be performed.
The Fragonard Room at the Frick Museum, one of the rooms in which the play will be performed.

With the announcement yesterday that Alexandra Schulman is stepping down from 25 years at the helm of British Vogue, we started to think–after you’ve run such an influential style and culture bible like Vogue, what do you do for a second act? Well, for one editor, Joan Juliet Buck, who ran French Vogue (she’s American), the answer was–act.  Buck, a brilliant writer, too, memorably portrayed Madame Elisabeth Brossart, the head of the Cordon Bleu school,  in the Nora Ephron-directed and Meryl Streep flick, Julie and Julia.

Now you can see Buck in a new production, The Constant Players,  that’s on at the glorious Frick Museum Thursday, February 2nd, and Saturday, February 4th. The one-act comedy, written by the French eighteenth-century playwright Pierre de Marivaux, a well-regarded successor to the renowned seventeenth-century playwright Molière, was adapted and directed by Mériam Korichi.  Joining Buck will be with actors Catherine Eaton, Adam Green, and Sophie Orloff; opera singers Clarissa Lyons (soprano), Ashley Kerr (soprano), Nicholas Martorano (baritone), and Alexander Swan (tenor); and pianist Gerald Martin Moo. The play will be  presented in conjunction with the special exhibition Pierre Gouthière: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court.

While the museum has hosted several performances in its galleries, this will be the first time a play has been staged in its entirety. Actors will perform as they move among the Fragonard Room, the Dining Room, and Music Rooms. Since Marivaux’s work is rarely translated or preformed in New York, this special showing gives New Yorkers a rare opportunity to experience one of the most important French dramatists of the eighteenth century.

Tickets may be purchased online for $50 ($45 for Members) at www.frick.org/salon. The play runs from 7–8:30 PM.