Press Release: “Rose” at Cotuit Center for the Arts

Cotuit Center for the Arts present “Rose,” a one-woman play by Laurence Leamer, April 4 to 20 in the Black Box Theater. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM.

Set in 1969 in the parlor of the Kennedys’ Hyannis Port compound a week after Teddy’s fateful error on a bridge at Chappaquiddick, “Rose” is the story of the triumphs and sorrows of Rose Fitzpatrick Kennedy, her family, her husband, and her nine children, as told by the matriarch herself.

“Ruled by the dictates of her father, her husband, and the priests of the Catholic Church, Rose learned early on to live by a code of submission and self-suppression,” wrote the Chicago Sun-Times. Showbiz Chicago noted, “The writing is quite candid and brutally real.”

Both stoic and fragile, reserved and revealing, Rose, played by Linda Monchik, recalls the remarkable accomplishments and the incredible losses of the Kennedy family, reflects on the Camelot years and more difficult times, and finds new understanding of the choices she made as well as those made by her husband and children.

“Rose Kennedy was the daughter of the first Irish American mayor of Boston, ‘Honey Fritz,’ and the mother of three sons who served in Washington at the same time: the president of the United States, the attorney general, and the junior senator from Massachusetts,” said Monchik, who has done considerable research for the part.

“Rose was an iconic 20^th century woman who prevailed, despite a multitude of personal tragedies, keeping her family together, and inspiring them to greatness,” said Monchik. “She wrote that her life was based on faith, ‘A path from which I never wander,’ and, when asked what made her family different, she responded, ‘We get up and go.’ She was indomitable.”

Monchik has performed in numerous theatrical productions on the Cape, in Boston, Providence, and on the South Coast, including the 2017 performance of “Rose,“ directed by Joan Edstrom at the Woods Hole Theater Company and Falmouth Museums on the Green. She has appeared in several Cotuit Center for the Arts productions, including “Thirty-Three Variations,” “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” “Steel Magnolias,” “The Belle of Amherst,” the one-woman show about Emily Dickinson, and “The Weight of Silence.”

Leamer, an accomplished journalist and author, has written extensively about the Kennedys. He based his play on 40 hours of audio interviews with Rose Kennedy conducted by Robert Coughlan, the ghost writer of her 1974 memoir.

Tickets ae $20, $15 for members. Cotuit Center for the Arts is at 4404 Route 28 in Cotuit. For more information, visit artsonthecape.org or call 508-428-0669.

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What:

2^nd Wednesday Theater presents “Rose,” by Laurence Leamer

Where:

Cotuit Center for the Arts, 4404 Route 28, Cotuit

When:

April 4 to 20, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 PM; Sunday at 2 PM

Admission:

$20, $15 for members

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