Padua Playwrights presents the world premiere of “Villon” by Murray Mednick

LOS ANGELES - Jan. 15, 2014 - PRLog -- Murder, mayhem and poetry. Award-winning, visionary playwright Murray Mednick brings his unique sensibility to the hair-raising, sometimes violent, and often hilarious exploits of medieval poet François Villon in a world premiere production directed by the playwright. Employing his signature blend of poetic lyricism and vaudevillian wordplay, Mednick follows the 15th century poet and his gang of bandits, vagabond priests and swordsmen-courtiers through the treacherous forests of medieval France.

Kevin Weisman (Kives on HBO’s Hello Ladies, Marshall Flinkman on ABC’s Alias) takes on the title role, heading an ensemble that includes Peggy A. Blow (In the Red and Brown Water at the Fountain, Mednick’s The Fool and the Red Queen), Alana Dietze (BOB, God's Ear, Everything Will Be Different for The Echo Theater Co. Lascivious Something for Circle X), Troy Emmet Dunn (Rhinoceros, Agamemnon, Quartet, Trojan Women for City Garage), Geoffrey Dwyer (The Night of the Black Cat at Edgemar, Carnevil at Sacred Fools), Carl J. Johnson (The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later at GLCLA), Gray Palmer (Mednick’s Out of the Blue, DaddyO Dies Well, The Fool and the Red Queen) and Christopher Rivas (Death of A Salesman at South Coast Rep, Helen at Getty Villa).

“Villon was a tremendous contradiction,” says Mednick, who is careful to note that his play is an homage and a theater riff rather than a straight biography. “He was plucked out of the gutter and educated in the Church and at the University of Paris, only to become a bandit and a murderer. He was a Catholic scholar who could write great religious poetry alongside the bawdiest of ballads. He was pardoned by the King because his poetry was so magnificent.”