Richard
Byrne
An Evening With Lola Montez
Love. Lies. Riots. Revolution. Spend the night with a firebrand.
An Evening With Lola Montez is one of the most fascinating Fringe shows I've seen..." -- Broadway World
"[T]he crafty script weaves through the circuitous passages in Lola’s rise to international acclaim." -- DC Theatre Scene
In An Evening with Lola Montez, the famed dancer who brought down Bavaria’s king in 1848 tells her own picaresque tale of celebrity, tragedy, beauty and reinvention.
The play is set late in Lola’s career, when she could no longer keep up the arduous grind of dancing and action on stages across the globe.
Though Lola's body failed her, she had one last card to play to find the spotlight: she wrote and delivered lectures to enraptured audiences eager to hear tales plucked from backstage and boudoirs – as well as her own reflections on love and beauty.
Set at one of these public talks in the late 1850s, An Evening with Lola Montez is a one-woman show that offers sharp and poignant reflections on notoriety and fateful encounters from an unforgettable figure of the 19th Century.
READ MORE on STAGE WRITE:
Posts about the life and the character of Lola Montez -- and the process of writing An Evening with Lola Montez, including:
Why was Lola Montez always caricatured with a whip?
A journey past the legends and the lies to find the real Lola Montez.
An Evening with Lola Montez is available for performance in English & in German translation. Contact Richard Byrne for details.
World premiere: July 2019 at the Capital Fringe Festival
Directed by DeLisa White. Featuring Mary Murphy
2024 revival with 2019 team ran in DC and NYC in March and April 2024
Program note essay from the world premiere of An Evening with Lola Montez.