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By Adam Hetrick
From Playbill | Original Article

Jeff McCarthy

Jeff McCarthy, Jay O. Sanders and Harris Yulin have been announced to join Tony Award-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave for "Torture Team," Philippe Sands' account of the U.S. sanctioning of torture, at the Long Wharf Theatre.

Presented Jan. 16 at 7 PM, "Torture Team," according to Long Wharf, "tells the story of attorney Philippe Sands' investigation of Donald Rumsfeld's 2002 memo, authorizing the new interrogation techniques that led to torture at Guantanamo Bay and beyond." A discussion with the artistic team will follow the presentation.

Long Wharf artistic director Gordon Edelstein has shaped the evening that uses "Torture Team" as its base, but includes footage from "Judgment at Nuremberg," the television series "24," as well as Murat Kurnaz's memoir "Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo."

Sanders is also expected to reprise his performance as George W. Bush in a reading from David Hare’s Stuff Happens as part of the event. McCarthy (Urinetown, The Pirate Queen) has been seen at the Long Wharf in The Price; Yulin has acted and directed at Long Wharf and appeared in the Broadway productions of The Price and Hedda Gabler.

The Long Wharf issued the following statement about the event: "One of the darkest chapters of American history was the officially sanctioned torture of prisoners of war in Guantanamo Bay following Sept. 11. In breaking Geneva Convention rules and the rules of all civilized nations, the United States slipped into a kind of behavior unbefitting the values that make this country great. In his book, Philippe follows the thorny path of denials and buck-passing under the Bush administration regarding who actually ordered and approved the torture of prisoners. We are continuing our time-honored tradition of using Long Wharf Theatre as a forum for the discussion of controversial ideas."

Redgrave, currently on Broadway in Driving Miss Daisy, is a Tony Award winner for her performance of matriarch Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night, and earned an Oscar for her performance the film "Julia." She was Tony-nominated for The Year of Magical Thinking.  

For tickets visit LongWharf.org.