MARY AND MAX Will Play Austria's Theatre Linz

The multi-award winning musical theatre department of Landestheater Linz/Austria will present the European premiere of MARY AND MAX the Musical, which had its world premiere just a few months ago at Theatre Calgary, Canada developed by Broadway Dreams Foundation. Based on the claymation film by Adam Elliot, the revised German-speaking version (translation by Jana Mischke) will open in the new opera house of Linz, directed by Viennese director Andy Hallwaxx in a stage design by Kaja Dymnicki.

According to Artistic Director Matthias Davids, "I felt, after seeing the presentation in Munich [which won the 2018 MUT Prize Critics Award], that MARY AND MAX has a high potential to be a new successful show. I had seen and loved the movie, so I was looking forward to finding out how the (not so easy) transition from a stop-motion world to the musical theatre stage would function. The result is very promising, since the story is relevant to us. The tragicomic story of Mary and Max, brilliantly reflected also in the composition of Bobby Cronin, is heartbreaking as well as heartwarming and it is very much surprising how much you feel, suffer and laugh with these odd characters. I am looking forward to having MARY AND MAX in our theatre taking audiences into their world, a humorous-melancholy parable of the beauty and ugliness of life."

Musiktheater Linz was erected in 2013 as one of two houses of Landestheater Linz, a repertory theatre with five departments: opera, musical theatre, ballet, straight plays and theatre for young people. Landestheater Linz shows about 1000 performances with audiences of about 400,000 per season. The musical theatre department (artistic direction: Matthias Davids) is unique in the German-speaking market and presents 4 to 6 productions per season with many German-speaking and Austrian premieres and at least one world premiere per season, including David Bowie's LAZARUS, and Dave Malloy's PRELUDES. https://www.landestheater-linz.at/EN/

Bullied 13-year old Lily has locked herself in her room. Her newly single father doesn't know what to do. Always a storyteller, he chooses to finally tell Lily the story of "Mary and Max", a tale set in the 1970s about the seemingly random friendship between Mary Daisy Dinkle, a chubby and lonely eight-year-old with a birthmark on her forehead the color of poo who lives in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia and Max Jerry Horowitz, a 44-year-old obese New Yorker who is soon diagnosed with a newly named disorder, Asperger's Syndrome. As penpals, they go through their highest and lowest times together, spanning twenty years. But as time flies, will Mary and Max ever find a way to meet before it's too late? And, will Lily spiral into darkness before understanding the truth about her own history?