Westport Country Playhouse will present a Script in Hand playreading of “Still,” a romantic story of two reunited lovers, on Monday, May 5, at 7 p.m. Written by Lia Romeo and directed by Mark Shanahan, Playhouse artistic director and Script in Hand curator, the play is nominated for a 2025 John Gassner Award, presented by the Outer Critics Circle.
“I am thrilled to present Lia Romeo’s remarkable ‘Still’ as part of our Script in Hand series,” said Shanahan. “Lia's script is heartbreakingly funny even as it is beautifully insightful, offering a poignant look at the complexities of rekindled relationships. In ‘Still,’ we meet characters who navigate their regrets, their hopes, and their personal beliefs, even as they are willing to bear their vulnerabilities and reveal their passions. This is a play that not only confronts uncomfortable truths but does so with a skillful blend of humor and heart, and I know it will get our audience talking!”
When former lovers Helen and Mark reunite after years apart, they quickly realize that the person each of them once knew—and the love they shared—might be more complicated than they remembered. What begins as an attempt to reconnect turns into a sharp, funny, and deeply emotional exploration that challenges everything the pair thought they understood about the past—and the possibilities for their future. As old wounds are reopened, secrets are revealed, and uncomfortable truths come to light, “Still” explores what happens when we confront the people from our past—and discover that we might never have truly known them at all.
Cast members are John Bedford Lloyd as Mark (Westport Country Playhouse: “The Drawer Boy”; Broadway: “Some Americans Abroad,” “The Rainmaker”; Television: “Ozark,” “The Divide,” “John Adams,” “Mohammad Ali’s Greatest Fight”; Film: “Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps,” “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Bourne Supremacy,” “Nixon,” “Philadelphia,” “The Abyss,” “Crossing Delancey,” “Trading Places”; worked with Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) since 2006, directing and developing new work with the residents of Green Haven Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in New York); and Allison Mackie as Helen (Westport Country Playhouse: “The Constant Wife,” “Dear Brutus,” “David Copperfield”; Broadway: “Cyrano de Bergerac” as Roxane, opposite Frank Langella, “Candida” with Joanne Woodward; Regional: “The Big Knife,” “La Ronde” at Williamstown, dir. Joanne Woodward; “Fallen Angels,” “The Royal Family,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Peccadillo,” “When Last We Flew”; Film/TV: HBO’s “The Great Lillian Hall,” “Our Very Own,” “Original Sin,” “Gia,” “Rear Window,” “Friends & Family,” “Those People,” “Night Sweats,” “The Gymnast,” “Sliver”).
Stage directions will be read by Rebbekah Vega-Romero ((Westport Country Playhouse: Stage directions for Script in Hand playreadings of “True Art,” “Tenderness and Gratitude Number Four,” “Mauritius”; Theatre: “Showboat,” “West Side Story,” “The Fantasticks,” “A Christmas Carol”; founding member of the DIEZ collective; LaGuardia (“Fame”) H.S., Boston University, 2023 Doreen Montalvo Scholarship honoree; @RebbekahVR).
Playwright Lia Romeo is a recent graduate of the Juilliard playwriting program. Her plays have been developed at the O’Neill, La Jolla Playhouse, the Lark, and elsewhere, and have been produced in NYC by Colt Coeur, Project Y Theatre, and others, as well as regionally at venues such as Dorset Theatre Festival, Laguna Playhouse, Unicorn Theatre, and New Jersey Repertory Theatre. Four of her plays have been recognized by the Kilroys List. Her plays are published by TRW, Broadway Licensing, and Broadway Play Publishing. She is the associate artistic director with Project Y Theatre Company and the co-founder of the Parent-Caregiver Playwrights Group, and she teaches in the M.A. program in creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is a cancer survivor and the mother of a five-year-old son.
Director Mark Shanahan is Playhouse artistic director and Script in Hand curator. For the 2024-25 Season of Laughter, he directed “The 39 Steps,” “A Sherlock Carol,” and “Theatre People.” He directed his own adaptation of “Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” in partnership with Agatha Christie Ltd., which premiered at the Tony Award-winning Alley Theatre. He is the author of “A Merry Little Christmas Carol,” “See Monsters of the Deep,” the Off-Broadway and regional hit comedy “The Dingdong,” as well as numerous radio plays as creator of the White Heron Ghost Light series, featuring Christopher Plummer, Judith Ivey, Rhonda Ross, and other notables. Shanahan has directed at stages around the country such as Alley Theatre, George Street Playhouse, Virginia Stage, Arkansas Rep, White Heron, Mile Square Theatre, Hudson Stage, Theatre Squared, Fulton Opera House, Weston Playhouse, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, Florida Rep, Penguin Rep, Merrimack Rep, The Cape Playhouse, and many more. As an actor, Shanahan has appeared on and Off-Broadway (“The 39 Steps,” “Tryst,” “The Shaugraun,” and others) and at many celebrated regional theatres. Shanahan has appeared on the Westport Country Playhouse stage in “Journey’s End” (2005), “David Copperfield,” directed by Joanne Woodward and Annie Keefe, (2005), “Sedition” (2007), “Tryst” (2008), and “Around the World in 80 Days” (2009), and numerous Script In Hand readings. Shanahan is also the creator and curator of Westport Country Playhouse Radio Theater, in partnership with WSHU Public Radio, and served as writer/director of the Playhouse radio adaptation of “A Merry Little Christmas Carol,” and as director of scripts commissioned for the series.
Tickets are $30. Running time is 80 minutes, no intermission. Mature language; recommended for 15 and up.
.