Fake (by Eric Simonson) app for iPhone and iPad

Fake (by Eric Simonson) is presented by L.A. Theatre Works. This standalone audiobook app combines a professional audio recording with supplemental features for download-once, grab-and-go anywhere enjoyment.

At the top of Eric Simonson’s premiering Steppenwolf Theatre Company drama Fake, you think you’re about to be happily sucked into a paleontological whodunit. A bony, heady, really well-acted cross, perchance, between “The Mousetrap,” “On the Origin of Species” and “Night at the Museum.”

Welcome to the country house of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. Under discussion is the skull known as the Piltdown Man, the alleged pivotal evolutionary link between chimps and the rest of us.

Houseguests include Charles Dawson, the suave collector who claimed to have been handed the skull by a workman in an East Sussex gravel pit; Arthur Woodward, the keeper of the prestigious London museum that exhibited it; and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a suspicious French priest who trained as a geologist and has his own esoteric agenda regarding God’s relationship with Charles Darwin.

Conan Doyle knows a rat when he smells one and he is not to be outwitted by charlatans. He even engages a racy American journalist—a female pilot!—to help sniff out the instigator and the motivation behind this fakery.

Oscar-winning and Tony-nominated writer and director Eric Simonson explores the most famous archeological hoax in history. Alternating between 1914 and 1953, journalists and scientists set out to uncover who planted the Piltdown Man skull.

Everyone’s a suspect, including the legendary Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Be sure to listen to our interview with Russell H. Tuttle, a Professor of Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago. Professor Tuttle has worked in the field of physical anthropology since 1965, and has written extensively on primatology, human anatomy, and hominoid evolution.

This is an L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Kate Arrington, Coburn Goss, Francis Guinan, Alan Wilder and Larry Yando. This play is part of L.A. Theatre Works’ Relativity Series featuring science-themed plays. Major funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to enhance public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.

DURATION: About a 2 hour performance.

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