For Immediate Release: March 18, 2005
Media Contact: Jane Stojak, Triangle Theater, 215.760.0230

Meet a different kind of odd couple. Val is a successful British actress, married and childless, but with three dogs she calls "the girls," and her friend of more than 40 years, Kate, a practical, widowed New England writer, with grown children, and a beloved dog. The charming story of these two old friends – their worries, memories and joys – is told through their e-mail correspondence in “Oldfriends.com,” premiering Thursday, March 24 at the Triangle Theater.

The play by Marcia J. Monbleau was inspired by the author's own relationship with a friend, the actress and long-time Cape Cod resident Pat Carroll, who was most recently the voice of Ursula the Squid in Disney's “The Little Mermaid.” Carroll told Monbleau that she was frustrated with the parts she was being offered – most of them caricatures of older women. “I wanted to do something with older characters who had a life,” Monbleau said.

Carroll told Monbleau about her own lifelong friend, a woman she had shared an apartment with during her early years in theater who had married an Englishman and moved to Britain, and that became the basis of the play. “I just started thinking about the play and typing and typing,” Monbleau said. The play is a study of long-term friends, with a contemporary technological twist – using e-mail as a cost-effective way to stay in touch.

The play stars area actresses Ginna Higgins and Ellen Sheinkin whose credits include “The Glass Menagerie” and “Mame” at the Ritz Theatre in Oaklyn, NJ (Higgins) and “A Catered Affair” at the Triangle Theater (Sheinkin). The two actresses are themselves very old friends, sharing a combined experience of more than 60 years in theater.

Tickets to “oldfriends.com” are $20, with discounted tickets at $12 for seniors and students. Reservations can be made by calling the Triangle Theater at 215-763-0110 or e-mailing tickets@triangletheater.com. The show runs from March 24 – April 3, with shows at 8 PM on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and at 3 PM on Sundays.

The Triangle Theater opened its doors in September 2002, after an extensive renovation of this historic building. Since 1999, its resident company, Random Acts of Theater has produced more than 20 plays based on original material. The Triangle Theater was honored in November 2004 by the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia with a Barrymore award for New Collaborations in Theatre, for their collaboration with KitchenAid's The Book and The Cook festival on the Spring 2004 productions of Arje Shaw's “A Catered Affair” and Michael A. Carson's “Front of House.” Jane Stojak, the Founder and Executive Director of Random Acts, was recently the subject of a profile in the March 2005 issue of MORE, a national women's magazine.

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