IMPORTANT NOTE: 33 Variations is performed at an alternate venue: Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont Ave., Chicago, just a few blocks northwest of TimeLine.
33 Variations Performance Calendar
Aug. 30 - Oct. 21, 2012 previews 8/24 - 8/29
Running time:
Approximately 2 hours
30 minutes, including one intermission
TimeLine's 2012-13 season opener is an elegant waltz between past and present, fact and speculation, a mother and daughter, and art and life. One of classical music's enduring riddles is why Ludwig van Beethoven devoted four years of his diminishing life writing 33 variations of a mediocre waltz. Two hundred years later, a modern-day music scholar is driven to solve the mystery even as her own health and relationship with her daughter crumbles.
The result is an extraordinary new American play — accompanied throughout by a live pianist playing the variations themselves — about passion, parenthood, and the moments of beauty that can transform a life.
"TimeLine is thrilled to bring this dynamic, lyrical and haunting play to Chicago for the first time," Artistic Director PJ Powers said. "Although we'll present it in a slightly larger venue than our home on Wellington Avenue, TimeLine's signature intimacy and immediacy remains intact. Audiences will sit just yards away from a gorgeous Steinway piano and hear Beethoven's 'Diabelli Variations' brought to life. Theatre and music aficionados alike will be transported through time to experience the beauty, mystery and enduring legacy of a master composer's work, in concert with a modern-day story that is both intensely personal and truly universal."
"[A] penetrating look into the nature of artistic creation and its connection to life. Music lovers and theater lovers alike won't be disappointed."
