Good Night, Oscar
Written by Doug Wright
Maltz Jupiter Theatre 
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Artistic Direction by Andrew Kato
Scenic Design by Michael Schweikardt
Costume Design by Siena Zoë Allen
Lighting Design by Dalton Hamilton
Sound Design by Ernesto K. Gonzalez
Starring Max Roll
A Note from BillGood Night, Oscar is about the myths America tells itself: success, celebrity, genius, freedom, and who gets to control the story. At its center is a man whose brilliance won’t stay inside the structures built to hold it, and a media machine as fascinated by that brilliance as it is fearful of it.
I came to this production aware of the virtuosity at the center of the story, but I also wanted to fully develop the ensemble of characters around him. Max Roll, who knows the piece from the original Broadway and London companies, brought deep knowledge of the material and the openness to continue developing his distinct Oscar Levant.
Together with a gifted cast, and guided by Doug Wright’s remarkable language, we built an ensemble piece in which everyone is walking a unique high wire, trying to protect their own heart, livelihood, career, and sanity. These are people negotiating ambition, mental health, money, and creativity, and facing the cost of stepping outside the boundaries society draws for us.
What moved me most, though, is that Good Night, Oscar is a love story. It is about the complicated love that holds unconventional partners together when talent, illness, ambition, and the world’s demands pull in the other direction. That is the collision I kept returning to in rehearsal: the American drive to become extraordinary, and the very human need to be known, protected, forgiven, and loved.
For me, the production became an urgent look at what happens to people who dare to imagine a life beyond the polite parameters of the known world, and at the people who love them enough to travel into that unknown with them.
