THE ART OF DECEPTION, AT RBR

rbr_playsilo_ir Matt Dubrow, opposite Madelyn Monaghan and Ray DeLuca, does double duty in RBR’s staging of ‘Is He Dead?’ playing both the artist Millet and (in drag) that  character’s fictional twin sister.

The Red Bank Theatre Company at Red Bank Regional High mixes the contemporary and the past with it’s latest staging, which gets underway Thursday night.

The company will present ‘Is He Dead?’ a farce adapted from a long-lost Mark Twain play of the same name.

Twain’s manuscript, written in 1898, was discovered in 2002 and adapted into a play by David Ives, garnering Ives a 2007 Tony nomination.

Set in Paris in 1846, the story centers on Jean-François Millet, a real-life painter; Twain, however, depicted him as a starving artist who fakes his own death in order to drive up the value of his work, leaving him to parade about in drag as his fictional twin sister.

Among the cast members are:

CHICAGO REID HENDERSON
DUTCHY ARI BELLER
LEROUX RAY DELUCA
MARIE MADELYN MONAGHAN
CECILE KATIE STEINBERG
MILLET MATT DUBROW
ANDRE MILTON DURHAM
MME BATHILDE SKYLAR APTER
MME CARON JESS MAGDOSKO
O’SHAUGHNESSY PEADAR MCMAHON
THORPE CHRIS DUBROW
REPORTER MATT BROWN
CHARLIE CHRIS DUBROW
KING OF FRANCE VINNY MARTINI
SULTAN OF TURKEY NOLAN MENDOZA
EMPEROR OF RUSSIA ERIC MERCADANTE

Performances begin on Thursday  at 7p and continue Friday and Saturday at 7:30p. A matinee performance is scheduled for Sunday at 2p. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students and senior citizens.