There should be jobs aplenty available from sea to shining sea as America's regional theatres gear up for what promises to be a particularly fertile theatrical season. New works abound, many from an impressive list of names that includes Claudia Allen, Mart Crowley, Jeff Daniels, Christopher Durang, David Henry Hwang, Nagle Jackson, Arthur Laurents, Warren Leight, Jane Martin, William Mastrosimone, Charles Mee, Arthur Miller, Richard Nelson, Marsha Norman, OyamO (Charles Gordon), David Rabe, Keith Reddin, Regina Taylor, Alfred Uhry, and August Wilson. Even the late Tennessee Williams will be represented with yet another posthumous premiere taken from his unpublished writings.
New musicals are considerably scarcer, but they could prove to be cherce. Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince are reunited for the first time in nearly 20 years for Gold!, book by John Weidman, based on the lives of two eccentric American characters, Wilson and Addison Mizener. The Mizener brothers' lives paralleled the age of vaudeville, which dictates the storytelling style. Charles Strouse, Lee Adams, and Rupert Holmes have musicalized Paddy Chayefsky's Marty, while Holmes alone has single-handedly musicalized the cable TV series he created about the early days of radio, Remember WENN. Hal Hackady and Lee Pockriss have teamed with original creator Henry Farrell to make those demented showbiz sisters, Blanche and Jane Hudson, sing in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Michael Mayer directs a rock rendition of Wedekind's Spring Awakening, already slated to move to NYC's Roundabout Theatre. And new musical revues are being created around the songbooks of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Jerry Herman, and Randy Newman.
There's the usual helping of classics, of course, some adapted and/or directed by names like JoAnne Akalaitis (Racine's Phedre), Baz Luhrmann (Puccini's La Bohème), Eric Simonson (Melville's Moby Dick), Lanford Wilson (Ibsen's Ghosts), and Mary Zimmerman (five fairy tales). And it seems like you won't be able to visit a state in the union without tripping over a production of David Auburn's Proof or Rebecca Gilman's Spinning into Butter or Boy Gets Girl. Other recent shows getting multiple productions include Bat Boy: The Musical, Big Love, Copenhagen, Dirty Blonde, The Drawer Boy, Fully Committed, Homebody/Kabul, In the Blood, The Laramie Project, Lobby Hero, and St. Lucy's Eyes.
So, hey, look it over, and then head out on the job hunt. As Carolyn Leigh once put it, "The only way is up!"
The East
Upstate New York
Bruce Bouchard, Capital Repertory Theatre's co-founder and former artistic director, has returned from Hollywood to start a new company, Saratoga Stages, with Lew and Pat Titterton. Stages, founded under the aegis of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, makes its public debut Oct. 27-Nov. 16 at Skidmore College's Studio Theatre with Joe Pintauro's The Dead Boy. It will be interesting to see what Bouchard, who left Albany in 1995, has up his sleeve this time around.
Current Capital Rep Artistic Director Maggie Mancinelli-Cahill will direct two shows for the downtown venue this season—Proof (Sept. 6-Oct. 6) and The Blue Room (May 9-June 8). In addition to the regular slate, Cap Rep also has a few limited engagements on tap, including a reprise of the hit comedy Triple Espresso (which will be presented at The Egg, Sept. 10-15) and Becky Mode's Fully Committed (Dec. 3-22). Committed was developed locally at the Adirondack Theatre Festival before moving on to great success Off-Broadway and around the country. ATF Artistic Director Martha Banta directs.
Lenox. Mass.' Shakespeare and Company hit pay dirt earlier this summer with Annette Miller in an extended world premiere run of William Gibson's Golda Meir bio, Golda's Balcony (not to be confused with his 1977 Broadway effort, Golda). The New York State Theatre Institute hopes to do the same when Renee Taylor stops by (Sept. 28-30) with a revival of her own one-woman show, Golda (directed by husband Joe Bologna).
—Michael Eck
Toronto
Children caught in the tensions of divorce, different takes on the black experience, and a behind-the-scenes look at a staging of Hamlet figure in Toronto's most anticipated productions for 2002-03. The Tarragon Theatre opens its season with Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, in which Morris Panych brings his acerbic wit to bear on an 11-year-old girl dealing with her parents' crumbled marriage, an atomic missile crisis, and a stranger who resembles her dead goldfish (Sept. 24-Oct. 27). Canadian Stage premieres Sunday Father (Jan. 9-Feb. 1), in which two brothers try to stay close despite their parents' divorce, by the fast-rising Adam Pettle, author of the hit Zadie's Shoes.
Michael Miller, a black playwright with a strong track record, offers two productions—El Paso, in which a 50-year-old escapes the present by locking herself in her bedroom and examining her past in that Texas city (Factory Theatre, Sept. 28-Oct. 27), and, for youthful viewers, a stage biography about an indomitable modern hero, In the Freedom of Dreams: The Story of Nelson Mandela (Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People, April 5-18).
One of the late novelist Carole Corbeil's best works, In the Wings, features a group of actors rehearsing Hamlet and discovering that their own lives and those of the play's characters are blurring. Add a critic obsessed with a company actor and the result is a work that comments tellingly on the emotional links between drama on stage and off. Nicky Guadagni, an actor herself, adapts the novel for Theatre Passe Muraille (Nov. 8-Dec. 8).
—Jon Kaplan
Boston
New plays by world-famous talents are plentiful during Boston's 2002-03 theatre season.
One of the more headline-grabbing events is likely to be the Huntington Theatre Company's world premiere production (Oct. 18-Nov. 24) of Marty, a musical based on Paddy Chayefsky's 1953 original teleplay and 1955 film. The book is by Rupert (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) Holmes, the songs are by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams (Bye Bye Birdie, Golden Boy, and Applause), and the director is Obie Award-winning Mark Brokaw (How I Learned to Drive).
Later in the season (March 14-April 12), the Huntington collaborates with the Lyric Stage Company of Boston in another world premiere—2 Lives by Arthur (Gypsy, West Side Story, The Time of the Cuckoo) Laurents. Nicholas Martin directs this "dramedy" about a 72-year-old playwright and his husband of 35 years.
Director Peter Sellars, who began his career at Harvard, returns to the American Repertory Theatre (Cambridge, Mass.) with what will probably be a controversial production of Euripides' The Children of Herakles. This 2,400-year-old tale of the plight of war refugees runs Jan. 4-25.
The A.R.T. also offers the world premiere (May 24-June 29) of The Sound of a Voice, with text by David Henry Hwang, music by Philip Glass, and direction by Robert Woodruff.
And Boston's SpeakEasy Stage Company opens its new season with Bat Boy: The Musical (Oct. 4-26), which won the 2001 Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle Award for the Best Off-Broadway Musical. It's based on a supermarket tabloid article about the discovery in West Virginia of a truly multicultural child: half human-half bat.
—David Frieze
Providence
Musicals and new plays will be the thing in Providence this season. The oddity is that the musicals will be at the Trinity Repertory Company as well as the Providence Performing Arts Center.
Trinity will do Largo, a world premiere with book by David Henry Hwang that looks into the origins of American music and is aimed—eventually—at New York. Trinity will also do Annie.
Annie? Yes, says Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, explaining that he wants to attract younger audiences, especially busy parents in their 20s through 40s. And, he adds, the show is "politically smart and it's about hope, which we can use right now."
Trinity Rep, which broke ground in July for a third theatre, will also do the East Coast premiere of Joan Holden's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, based on the Barbara Ehrenreich book about minimum-wage work. The season also includes a co-production with the Berkeley Rep of Cloud Nine, which Eustis feels is "much more resonant" now than it was 20 years ago.
Perishable Theatre will do an entire season of premieres, beginning with Erik Ehn's My Baby, a look at the family dynamics of immigrants. Oana Maria Cajal, in collaboration with Artistic Director Mark J. Lerman, will show The Long Journey to Whereto. Her Exchange at Café Mimosa was a raucous hit last year at Perishable. The new play parade continues with Three One Acts by Aishah Rahman, and concludes with the Women's Playwriting Festival next May.
—Bill Gale
Connecticut
Stars and directors shine on the upcoming Connecticut season, none more brightly than Dame Edna at New Haven's Shubert (Oct. 15-20) and Hartford's Bushnell (Feb. 18-23).
Under the microscope are two new artistic directors, both in New Haven. At Long Wharf Theatre, Gordon Edelstein helms his adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's massive Mourning Becomes Electra, starring Jane Alexander (Nov. 19-Dec. 22).
Edelstein leaves directing the rest of the slate to the likes of Les Waters (Charles L. Mee's Wintertime, Oct. 2-Nov. 3), Michael Mayer (the world premiere of a rock musical version of Wedekind's Spring Awakening, Jan. 15-Feb. 16, in association with NYC's Roundabout Theatre), and John Rando (David Ives' Polish Joke, March 5-April 6).
At Yale Repertory Theatre, James Bundy begins his tenure with an oddity titled Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella (Sept. 20-Oct. 12), adapted and directed by Bill Rauch and Tracy Young. Like Edelstein, Bundy directs only one production himself, Amy Freed's satiric The Psychic Life of Savages (Feb. 14-March 8).
The new AD's fledgling season ends with Sam Waterston in the world premiere of David Rabe's The Black Monk (May 9-31). Daniel Fish directs.
Director Mark Lamos pops up at Yale with The Taming of the Shrew (March 21-April 12) following his return to Hartford Stage (where he used to be AD) to guide Karen Ziemba in Much Ado About Nothing (Sept. 5-Oct. 6). Hartford also has Jean Stapleton in Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful (Feb. 20-March 29) and Brian Murray in the premiere of Alfred Uhry's Edgardo Mine (Oct. 17-Nov. 17). The latter is directed by Doug Hughes, once AD at Long Wharf.
Got all that, possums?
—David A. Rosenberg
Westchester/Rockland
Fleetwood Stage in New Rochelle stages David Mamet's two-hander, A Life in the Theatre (Sept. 19- Oct. 6); Donald Margulies' literary deuce, Collected Stories (Nov. 7- 24); Mark Hampton and Mary Louise Wilson's mono-bio of Diana Vreeland, Full Gallop (Feb. 27- March 16); and Charles Ludlam's zany The Mystery of Irma Vep (April 25- May 11). Though there are no runts in the litter, Margulies' script and the sheer theatricality of Ludlam's madness tilt the scales.
Despite the fact that Executive Producer Tony Stimac has announced his exit from the Helen Hayes Theatre Company in Nyack, Rockland County's most visible regional theatre bravely pronounces new works and aces-in-the-hole: Jackie Mason's Prune Danish (Sept. 9-14 and 24-29); a Jerry Herman revue starring Donna McKechnie titled Showtune (Oct. 12-27); The Sound of Music (Nov. 30-Dec. 22); Terrence McNally's Master Class (Feb. 22-March 9); Rupert Holmes' spin-off of his AMC TV show, Remember WENN—The Musical (March 22-April 6); Dames at Sea (April 19-May 4); and Evita (June 7-22).
Look to Mason, Herman (in a pre-Broadway run), and Holmes (hopefully in the same boat) to lead. Even money, however, flows with Herman.
All that Westchester Broadway Theatre needs to do is not screw up its list of crowd-pleasing titles (Nunsense II, Aug. 1-Sept. 7; Kiss Me, Kate, Sept. 12-Dec. 1 and Dec. 31-Feb. 1; and Chicago Feb. 6-April 26). It is the paradigm of a successful dinner theatre—ask any producer offering a buffet. Messrs. Porter and Kander and Ebb will win this high-stakes race.
—E. Kyle Minor
The Hamptons
East Hampton's John Drew Theater is celebrating women. Composer-conductor Victoria Bond's new opera, Mrs. Satan, centers on Victoria Woodhull, a stockbroker who ran for U.S. President in 1874—before women could vote. It has its first (and sole) public performance Aug. 29. Marsha Norman's new play, Last Dance, will be read Aug. 30, and performance artist Laurie Anderson presents Happiness on Aug. 31.
On Sept. 1, Tovah Feldshuh heads the cast in a Playwrights' Theatre of East Hampton staged reading of The Elephant and the Dove, Naomi Lazard's new play about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Mae Richard's acclaimed musical revue about mother-daughter relations, Cut the Ribbons (music by Cheryl Hardwick and Mildred Kayden), is on stage Sept. 13-14. Marc Camoletti's farce, Don't Dress for Dinner, produced by Spindletop Productions, runs Sept. 26-Oct. 13.
Sag Harbor's Bay Street Theatre has its production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, starring Pat Hingle, Frank Wood, and B.D.Wong, running through Sept. 8. The fall schedule then switches to weekend performances, including singer Phoebe Snow (Sept. 21), composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown (Sept. 28), three new play readings (Oct. 19-20), jazz musician Herbie Mann (Nov.2), and singing sisters, The Roches (Nov. 9).
The Gateway Playhouse presents Jesus Christ Superstar at the large Patchogue Theatre through Sept. 7, and Swing! at their home barn theatre in Bellport (Sept. 11-28).
Filmmakers, actors, producers, distributors, and film-studies students flock to the Hamptons International Film Festival, a large showcase for independent films, in East Hampton and Westhampton Beach from Oct. 16-20.
—Jan Silver
New Jersey
Two new works by Regina Taylor are scheduled, including the world premiere of Crowns (Oct. 15-Nov. 3) at McCarter Theatre, which she will direct. It's based on a book by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry that pays homage to black customs via oral histories, gospel, and "hattitude." The female spirit is celebrated in Taylor's A Night in Tunisia at the George Street Playhouse (Sept. 17-Oct. 20). Directed by Ted Sod, it stars Suzzane Douglas portraying four diverse women, and will be punctuated by jazz standards, plus new songs by Timothy Graphenreed and Taylor.
The ties that bind a well-to-do African-American family are at the heart of last season's Off-Broadway hit, Blue, at the Paper Mill Playhouse (Jan. 8-Feb. 9). Written by Charles Randolph-Wright, with music by Nona Hendryx and lyrics by Hendryx and Randolph-Wright, the comedy with songs centers on a family funeral business in a small town in South Carolina. It is followed by the world premiere of Mark Saltzman's Romeo and Bernadette (Feb. 19-March 23), a musical comedy billed as Romeo and Juliet meets "The Sopranos."
Anything Daniel Fish has directed locally has been well worth seeing, so there's no reason to doubt that his production of Joe Orton's Loot, at McCarter Sept. 10-29, will be any different.
Two River Theatre Company has Stinkin' Rich, a new adaptation of Molière's The Miser (May 1-18). The setting is New York City in 1929, amid soaring optimism and a burgeoning stock market. The company will also tackle Oscar Wilde's rarely done Salome (March 13-30).
—Gretchen C. Van Benthuysen
Philadelphia
The 2002-03 Philadelphia theatre season kicks off Aug. 30 when the sixth annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival once again takes over the streets, theatres, and warehouses of Old City. Presenting 245 artists over 16 days, the event boasts an impressive lineup of progressive artists, including Obie winner Daniel MacIvor in Cul-de-sac, and Britney's Inferno, a commissioned world premiere from Headlong Dance Theater that combines the worlds of MTV darling Britney Spears and Dante's Inferno to explore the influence of pop culture in today's society.
Speaking of world premieres, the Arden Theatre Company hopes to continue its winning ways from last season with the maiden production of David Davalos' Daedalus: A Fantasia of Leonardo da Vinci (Sept. 12-Nov. 3), described by Artistic Director Terrence J. Nolen as an "incredibly ambitious" take on the competing philosophies of science and art.
Known as the city's foremost interpreter of everything Stoppard, the Wilma Theater is presenting Every Good Boy Deserves Favor (Nov. 20-26), in collaboration with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Staged at the orchestra's new home in the Kimmel Center, the production features the music of André Previn and will be directed by Wilma Artistic Director Blanka Zizka.
Perhaps the season's best news comes from the former Freedom Repertory Theatre, the nation's oldest African-American theatre, now dubbed the New Freedom Repertory Theatre. The company was on the brink of closing last spring, but has rebounded with a three-show season, including its annual Christmas and Easter offerings of Black Nativity (Nov. 30-Jan. 5) and Lazarus Unstoned (March 28-April 27), along with the world premiere of Jamie J. Brunson's Coming Time (Jan. 31-Feb. 23).
—J. Cooper Robb
The South
Washington, D.C.
The number of professional D.C. theatres has grown to over 80, up from just 14 only 20 years ago. Newer companies enjoying niche success include Project Y, which caters to the under-30 crowd; Cherry Red, which pushes the envelope with borderline X-rated fare; and Stanislavsky Theater Studio, a purveyor of the Russian school. In addition, Teatro de la Luna, Asian Stories in America, Le Neon, and others devote themselves to cultural and ethnic theatre. But the larger theatres still dominate the buzz.
The Studio Theatre will present Privates on Parade (Sept. 11-Oct. 20), book and lyrics by Peter Nichols, music by Denis King. This romp matches one of the theatre's great clowns, Floyd King, with the direction of Artistic Director Joy Zinoman. The combination should produce a delightful and sidesplitting evening.
In December, the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company will reprise Don De Lillo's rarely performed The Day Room (Dec. 16-Jan. 12). Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz directs a stellar cast that includes two faces that have been sorely missed on Washington stages, Grover Gardner and Rob Leo Roy. It runs at the Kennedy Center's AFI Theater.
Opening April 2 at the wonderful new Round House Theatre space is the East Coast premiere of nationally acclaimed D.C. writer Heather MacDonald's When Grace Comes In.
Finally, the Shakespeare Theatre will pack the house June 3-July 27 when the Henrik Ibsen classic, Ghosts, opens. The buzz stems from the combination of Edwin Sherin directing the incomparable Jane Alexander in the East Coast debut of the Lanford Wilson translation.
—Michael Willis
Virginia
A year ago, when Benny Sato Ambush took over as TheatreVirginia's artistic director, he promised an expanded artistic vision after an open dialogue with members of the community. The result is that theatregoers will be treated to all-Richmond premieres in the upcoming season. Ambush will kick off the season directing Tamer of Horses (Oct. 9-Nov. 2), by noted playwright, film, and television writer William Mastrosimone. Semi-autobiographical, it is a tale of a middle class couple that takes in a troubled runaway.
Beguiled Again: The Songs of Rodgers and Hart, a new musical revue (Nov. 26-Dec. 21), is on tap to celebrate the centenary of composer Richard Rodgers. Two powerful dramas follow: The Gate of Heaven (Jan. 15-Feb. 8), about a WW II soldier and prisoner and the relationship they forge over the years, and The Laramie Project (March 5-29), the Moises Kaufman-Tectonic Theatre much-produced version of the Matthew Shepard story.
Barksdale Theatre opens the season with Arthur Miller's classic, The Crucible, directed by Bruce Miller (Oct. 4-Nov. 3). Produced at Barksdale in 1980, only one year after its Broadway debut, The 1940's Radio Hour returns with a showcase of talent (Nov. 15-Dec. 29). David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, Proof, offers a suspenseful evening of theatre from Feb. 7-March 9. Proposals, by Broadway's most successful playwright, Neil Simon, transports the audience back to the '50s, as the Hines family gathers for a final retreat in the Poconos (March 21-April 19). Annie Get Your Gun spans most of the summer, from June 13-Aug. 3.
—Wendy Mathis Parker
North Carolina
Raleigh's Burning Coal Theatre Company has designated 2002-03 as "a season of laughter." Most promising is Tom Stoppard's Travesties, which plays Oct. 3-20. Rebecca Holderness directs this wacky comedy about the supposed doings of James Joyce, Lenin, and others in 1816 Zurich.
An ambitious Playmakers Repertory Company schedule lists a rare production of Salome (April 9-May 4). Newly adapted from the original French of Oscar Wilde by Matt DiCintio, the production will feature techniques of African theatre and dance and will be co-directed by David Hammond and Trazana Beverley.
In Sanford, Temple Theatre has plenty of variety, but the most attractive offering is Peter Shaffer's Lettice and Lovage. This wonderful saga of two British ladies who turn the touring of stately homes into a highly creative art form is slated for April 11-May 24.
Charlotte Repertory Theatre goes for the difficult with M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang (Oct. 19-Nov. 10). The 1988 Tony Award-winning drama will be seen in its regional premiere. For this production, the Charlotte Rep joins forces with another LORT theatre, New York's Syracuse Stage. Robert Moss directs.
A relative newcomer, North Carolina Stage Company, located in Asheville, will present A Wrinkle in Time by Anne Thioult, based on the classic, 1963 Newbery Award-winning children's book by Madeleine L'Engle. This tale of space travel plays from Nov. 16-Dec. 1.
—William Hardy
Atlanta
Getting a jumpstart on the season is Claudia Shear's Dirty Blonde (Aug. 14-Sept. 22) at Marietta's Theatre in the Square, featuring the exuberance of Shelly McCook, who is unparalleled at evoking belly laughs. Another starry showcase will be Actor's Express' Gypsy (Sept. 12-Nov. 2), headlining cabaret's Catherine the Great, Libby Whittemore, as the Mama Rose she was destined to play.
One of the cleverest comedies of 2001 was Robert Aguirre-Sacasa's Say You Love Satan, and the demon bard is back at Dad's Garage April 4-May 3, world premiering The Archie Plays, in which our beloved comic strip character mixes it up with child murderers.
Handpicking her plays for her second season, Alliance Theatre Artistic Director Susan V. Booth chooses the American premiere of Keith Reddin's Frame 312 (Oct. 16-Nov. 10), a JKF assassination exposé that Booth will direct. Artistic Associate Kent Gash should ignite Joe Calarco's Shakespeare's R&J (Jan. 24-March 2) and Sondheim and Weidman's Pacific Overtures (April 30-June 1). And stars Savion Glover and Ruby Dee reprise their respective NYC triumphs in Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk (Aug. 21-Sept. 29) and St. Lucy's Eyes (Feb. 5-March 9).
Booth's Alliance offers five mid-sized companies unprecedented access to the elite Woodruff Arts Center. Dad's Garage, Actor's Express, Horizon Theatre, Seven Stages, and Theatrical Outfit will run five personal best shows back to back from March 27-June 22. Titles include Bat Boy: The Musical, The Laramie Project, and The People vs. Mona, a musical with songs by Jim Wann of Pump Boys and Dinettes fame.
—Dave Hayward
The Midwest
Cincinnati/Louisville/Indianapolis
David Auburn's Proof, about math and recognition, is playing all over the Ohio Valley this season. It's up first at Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis (Sept. 5-Oct. 13). Then a midwinter Ohio River showdown: Actors Theatre of Louisville (ATL) (Jan. 4-Feb. 1) and the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park (Jan. 12-Feb. 14).
Ed Stern, Cincinnati Playhouse's producing artistic director, guest directs another intellectual Tony winner, Michael Frayn's Copenhagen (Jan. 22-Feb. 9), for Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC). It overlaps with the Playhouse's Proof, allowing Cincy audiences to compare and contrast.
ETC, which focuses on premieres, opens with The Guys (Sept. 4-22), the first production outside of New York City of an emotional script about fallen firefighters. Tony winner Warren Leight is workshopping his latest script at ETC: James and Annie, about an interracial marriage at the end of WW II, gets its first reading in late September, and a full production from March 12-30.
The always-inventive Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival leavens its classical repertoire with several shows about serious social issues: Stephen Adly Guirgis' Jesus Hopped the A-Train (Oct. 24-Nov. 17), Dael Orlandersmith's The Gimmick (Oct. 27-Nov. 12), Martin Sherman's Bent (Jan. 9-Feb. 2), and Suzan-Lori Parks' In the Blood (May 22-June 15).
Scripts from past Humana Festivals at ATL return to Ohio Valley stages. The Cincinnati Playhouse stages Eduardo Machado's Havana Is Waiting (Sept. 21-Oct. 20), seen in Louisville in 2001 as When the Sea Drowns in Sand. ATL brings back its 1981 Pulitzer Prize winner, Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart (May 4-31). And this season's Humana Festival runs March 5-April 13.
—Rick Pender
Columbus/Dayton/Pittsburgh
New works will generate the most excitement in Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Dayton.
Pittsburgh's City Theatre commissioned Christopher Durang to write a new, still-untitled comedy (Nov. 7-Dec. 5, Mainstage), and will be the first to present Birdie Blue: Where Are You? (March 13-April 27, Studio Theatre), Cheryl West's funny-sad new work about an older couple exploring life, love, aging, and returning home.
Columbus' Contemporary American Theatre Company (CATCO), whose only new works in recent years have been the playlets in its biannual Shorts Festivals, will end its season with the world premiere of Hungry Ghosts. After Bill Corbett's The Big Slam became a 2001 CATCO hit, the theatre commissioned Corbett—a wacky mind behind Comedy Central's "Mystery Science Theatre 3000"—to write a new full-length comedy about a couple of food critics on a culinary road trip.
Columbus' Wexner Center for the Arts will present the world premiere of Drummer Wanted (Feb. 20-23), writer-director Richard Maxwell's commissioned "personal-injury lawsuit" musical, described as a two-actor show about the claustrophobic Freudian world of an adult metal-head drummer (played by Pete Simpson of Blue Man Group).
Dayton's Human Race Theatre Company will honor David Auburn, who grew up in central Ohio, by presenting the first central Ohio production of Proof (March 13-30), Auburn's award-winning drama about an enigmatic woman.
Pittsburgh Public Theatre will emphasize classics, such as Artistic Director Ted Pappas' stagings of Much Ado About Nothing (Sept. 26-Oct. 27) and Man of La Mancha (Jan. 30-March 2).
—Michael Grossberg
Cleveland
Highlights of the 2002-03 season include three Dobama Theatre offerings. First up is a revised version of Homebody/Kabul, Tony Kushner's sprawling drama about love, war, and politics in Afghanistan (Sept. 13-Oct. 5). Written in 1998 in response to the Clinton administration's bombing of Afghanistan, the events of Sept. 11 and their aftermath have rendered the play both prescient and dated in its observations about pre-Taliban rule and anti-Western sentiment.
Four (Oct. 18-Nov. 8), Christopher Shinn's spare and hauntingly moving chamber play, tackles some tough questions about love, including homosexual and interracial relationships. And In the Blood (March 7-29), by 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan Lori-Parks (for Topdog/Underdog), puts her spin on Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter in this earlier drama about a homeless single mother.
A new play making its world premiere at The Cleveland Play House is Eric Coble's Bright Ideas (Oct. 15-Nov.10), a riotously funny black comedy about suburban parents hell-bent on doing whatever it takes to get their child into the best schools.
Cherry Docs, by Canadian playwright David Gow, is tailor-made for the Halle Theatre at the Jewish Community Center (Jan. 18-Feb. 2). The explosive story of hatred and bigotry revolving around a Jewish lawyer assigned to defend an unrepentant skinhead accused of murder should resonate for theatregoers attuned to the times in which we live.
Spinning into Butter, Rebecca Gilman's 1999 polemic about the dangers of racism and political correctness, is worth noting at Beck Center for the Arts (Sept. 27-Oct. 20).
—Fran Heller
Detroit
Maybe it's a post-Sept. 11 feeling that there's no time like the present, but a certain sense of renewal and revitalization permeates the season schedules of Detroit's theatres, with world and regional premieres—plus other surprises—in the offing. In chronological order, some highlights:
After a four year hiatus—this guy must have another job or something—Jeff Daniels is out with a new play, Across the Way, which will have its premiere run Sept. 26-Dec. 1 at Purple Rose Theatre, the playhouse Daniels founded 13 years ago. It's the story of an old man with secrets and a helpful neighbor who discovers them.
Performance Network, known for straight plays, goes way out of character by doing the musical Man of La Mancha (Nov. 21-Dec.22). It's Performance Network's first-ever production of a Broadway musical, although the size of the playhouse (fewer than 200 seats) dictates some scaling back. Robert Grossman has the Don Quixote/Miguel Cervantes role. Grossman is an excellent guitarist, which suggests some possibilities.
Plowshares Theatre, Detroit's African-American theatre, has a new play by noted playwright and University of Michigan theatre professor OyamO (Charles Gordon). The Black White Man (May 8-June 1) is loosely based on the true story of the first black Presbyterian missionary to the Congo during its colonization.
Detroit Repertory Theatre wraps up its season with Julie Jensen's Cheat (June 5-29). Set in Detroit during WW II, Cheat focuses on a young woman working in a factory and seeking her own liberation.
—Martin F. Kohn
Chicago
Chicago's 200-plus theatre companies will stage 800-plus shows, among them Goodman Theatre world premieres of August Wilson's ninth cycle play, Gem of the Ocean (April 18-May 24), and Gold! (starts June 20), the musical that reunites Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince.
Court Theatre has JoAnn Akalaitis' Phedre (Sept. 5-Oct. 6), and the two-part The Romance Cycle (March 28-June 1), combining Cymbeline and Pericles. Famous Door offers both parts of The Cider House Rules (Jan. 17-April 6).
Steppenwolf has the American premiere of Stephen Jeffrey's I Just Stopped By to See the Man (Nov. 14-Jan. 12); a Tony Kushner residency to rework Homebody/Kabul, directed by Frank Galati (July 10-Aug. 31, 2003); and the world premiere of Theatre District by Richard Kramer (Oct. 17-Nov. 17, co-produced with About Face Theatre) and Taking Care by Mia McCullough (March 6-April 6, winner of a 2002 ATCA Steinberg New Play Award).
Busy McCullough has two more world premieres at Stage Left, Cyber Serenade and Train of Thought (both Feb. 24-March 26). Claudia Allen also has two, the lesbian-themed Dutch Love at Bailiwick (starting April 28), and Unspoken Prayers with Judith Ivey at Victory Gardens (March 21-May 4). Other world premieres by notable locals: Ariadne's Thread by Ann Noble (Sept. 13-Oct. 27) and God and Country by Douglas Post (Nov. 15-Dec. 29), both at Victory Gardens; Empty by Brett Neveu at Stage Left (Sept. 7-Oct. 26); The Poet, the Puppet and the Prisoner, Blair Thomas puppetry telling four Garcia Lorca stories at Pegasus Players (Oct. 26-Dec. 8); and Jenny Laird's Sky Girls at Northlight, about five WW II female pilots (Jan. 29-March 3).
Lookingglass inaugurates a $4 million home (dates not yet announced) with The Secret in the Wings, five classic fairy tales adapted by Mary Zimmerman, followed by a world premiere adaptation of Studs Terkel's Race, directed by David Schwimmer.
—Jonathan Abarbanel
Wisconsin
Wisconsin's theatre feast will be rich and bountiful this season, with some of the plays currently most popular in regional theatre being mixed with other fare. Madison Repertory Theatre stages Proof (Aug. 30-Sept. 22), then the Milwaukee Repertory Theater mounts its own production of the Broadway hit on its second stage, the Stiemke Theater (Jan. 5-Feb. 2). The Laramie Project is first at Milwaukee's Windfall Theatre (Sept. 27-Oct. 12); Madison Rep audiences see their company's staging of the piece from March 7-30. Lobby Hero gets productions from Madison Rep (Jan. 3-26) and Milwaukee's Chamber Theatre (Feb. 14-March 9). Chamber also mounts the Milwaukee debut of Dinner with Friends (April 18-May 4).
Milwaukee Rep opens its season with a production of another stripe. Director and writer Eric Simonson is adapting Moby Dick for the stage (Sept. 6-Oct. 6). "If there is anything in American literature that approaches Shakespeare, it is this," he says, speaking of the Melville novel. Simonson adds that his adaptation will contain a wide range of music, although it is not a musical. "It will be a very physical production, with stage conventions, circus tricks. You won't see a whale, but I think you will imagine that whale. You won't see a ship on stage, but you will imagine that ship."
Writer-director Nagle Jackson, who was Milwaukee Rep's artistic director from 1971-77, is providing the plays that open the seasons of two Milwaukee companies. Chamber Theatre stages A Hotel on Marvin Gardens (Aug. 16 to Sept. 1), and Next Act Theatre mounts Jackson's Taking Leave (Sept. 13 to Oct. 6).
—Damien Jaques
Minneapolis/St. Paul
A new theatre season is like a big box of presents waiting to be unwrapped; each package has the potential to delight or disappoint. Some of the more tempting packages in the Twin Cities season are these:
The Guthrie Theater kicks things off with a double-header of world premieres. Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues, a political satire directed by David Esbjornson, is on the Mainstage (Aug. 3-Sept. 8), while the author-director team of Jane Martin and Jon Jory (rumored to reside in the same corporeal being) brings Good Boys, a racially tinged encounter between two fathers, to the Lab (Aug. 23-Sept. 22).
In mid-October, Norah Long, recently a stunning Eliza Doolittle, returns to Chanhassen Dinner Theatres as Guinevere in Camelot. Area premieres include Michael Frayn's Copenhagen (Jan. 8 at Park Square Theatre) and Becky Mode's Fully Committed (Nov. 22 at the Jungle Theater). And Children's Theatre Company will offer a star-laden A Year with Frog and Toad (Aug. 20-Nov. 2), which then travels to NYC's New Victory Theater.
Among the touring options, the Historic Orpheum hosts The Producers (Nov. 12-Dec. 7) and Urinetown (Sept. 24-Oct. 5, 2003), while the Ordway imports the pre-Broadway run of Arturo Brachetti (Dec. 10-15), and the post-Broadway The Full Monty (June 17-29).
Last but not least, the theatre critic of the St. Paul Pioneer Press will be feted (?) in an original work, aptly titled Bring Me the Head of Dominic Papatola, (Aug. 16-31 at the Bryant-Lake Bowl). Who knows what surprises these gift packages will reveal?
—Michael Sander
St. Louis
It looks like a big year is ahead for local actors, directors, and theatregoers.
The major change is the Fox Theatre's expansion, with longer runs for all its visiting productions. Two and three weeks of performances in the 4,000-seat house add some 20,000 seats per week. Interestingly, the Fox also sent some of its advertising budget to The New York Times, using 14,000 pre-printed inserts for the statewide edition on a Sunday. Early reports are of a good response to a season that includes the national tours of The Producers (Dec. 10-28) and The Full Monty (April 15-27).
Meanwhile, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis seems to be in comic mode, with A Flea in Her Ear (Sept. 11-Oct. 11), Ah, Wilderness! (Oct. 16-Nov. 15), and Anything Goes (Dec. 4-Jan. 3) as the opening Mainstage productions. Copenhagen changes the tone next spring, while The Drawer Boy (Jan. 22-Feb. 9) and The Syringa Tree (March 26-April 13) highlight the Studio season.
The St. Louis Black Repertory Company reopens in January. St. Lucy's Eyes is a St. Louis premiere, and the season closes with Damn Yankees. And New Line Theatre, whose tastes are sky-wide, plans a version of The Rocky Horror Show for October.
Two smaller companies also will have hectic schedules: Metro Theater Company expands to three productions, including a Dutch tale about Charles Lindbergh, at the Missouri Historical Society, while MHS resident company, Historyonics, looks at the lives of Theodore Roosevelt and Arthur Ashe, among others.
—Joe Pollack
The West
Texas
Houston's Alley Theatre leads this fall with a double whammy: new plays by Richard Nelson and Keith Reddin. Nelson directs his own The General from America on the Large Stage, with Corin Redgrave as the notorious Benedict Arnold. (Redgrave garnered a Tony nomination for his performance in the Alley's Not About Nightingales.) Following its Houston run (Oct. 11-Nov. 9), The General goes Off-Broadway to the Lucille Lortel Theatre.
Reddin's Frame 312 (Oct. 25-Nov. 24 on the Neuhaus Stage) takes its name from a frame of the Zapruder film that captured John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas. Carlin Glynn, under the direction of hubby Peter Masterson, stars as a woman who first saw the film in 1963, and 40 years later remains haunted by the memory.
Houston's Theatre Under the Stars inaugural season in the new Hobby Center for the Performing Arts features the world premiere of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Oct. 10-27). A new musical based on the 1960 Henry Farrell novel (also the basis for the iconic film), it has a book by Farrell, music by Lee Pockriss, and lyrics by Hal Hackady, under the direction of David Taylor.
The Dallas Theater Center has Charles Mee's rambunctious and acrobatic Big Love (Feb. 26-March 23), a modernization of Aeschylus' The Suppliant Women, featuring nine actors playing an army of unhappily betrothed couples and directed by Richard Hamburger. Mee will also be featured at Austin's Zachary Scott Theatre Center, which delivers the Southwest premiere of his Limonade Tous Les Jours (Jan. 23-March 2).
—Michael King
Colorado
Denver's two regional theatres are taking tiny steps this season, reacting to the economy with smaller shows and fewer premieres.
At Denver Center Theatre Company, that means opening with Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (Oct. 10-Nov. 9). And the company is producing several two-person plays: Behind the Broken Words, a visiting production with Roscoe Lee Browne and Anthony Zerbe (Oct. 14-Nov. 23); Bernice/Butterfly: A Two-Part Invention (Jan. 15-March 1); and 2 Pianos, 4 Hands (March 27-April 26).
Bernice/Butterfly is the only world premiere this season, written by Denver Center regular Nagle Jackson for company members Jamie Horton and Kathleen M. Brady. There are also two new adaptations: Chekhov's The Three Sisters (March 20-April 26), by James Warnick, and Molière's Scapin, or the Con Man (May 8-June 7), by Jackson.
At the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, the new season means familiar names: Neil Simon, Stephen Schwartz, Kaufman and Hart. Schwartz's Children of Eden becomes the new holiday musical (Dec. 3-29). The Dinner Party (Sept. 10-Oct. 6), The Man Who Came to Dinner (Jan. 8-Feb. 3), and Victor/Victoria (April 8-May 4) fill the other slots.
Curious Theatre Company expands to four plays this season, opening with An Almost Holy Picture (Sept. 14-Oct. 26), starring John Hutton, and presenting the premiere of The Rest of the Night (April 5-May 10), a new play by Robert Lewis Vaughan.
Theatre On Broadway weighs in with Rebecca Gilman's Boy Gets Girl and Claudia Shear's Dirty Blonde. This season, the smallest companies are making the most interesting choices.
—Lisa Bornstein
Utah
The world premiere of Julie Jensen's offbeat Wait (April 8-May 4) will be a highlight of the 2002-03 Salt Lake Acting Company season. Playwright-in-Residence Jensen has developed her latest rural Utah play with the help of two public readings this year in SLAC's New Play Sounding Series. Lee Blessing's African drama, Going to St. Ives (Sept. 24-Oct. 20), begins the SLAC season of contemporary plays, followed by Charles Mee's passionate, Aeschylus-based Big Love (Nov. 12-Dec. 8).
Continuing a record of strong musical productions, the Pioneer Theatre Company will end its season with Ragtime (May 7-24). This Terrence McNally/Stephen Flaherty/Lynn Ahrens musical seems tailor-made for the large Pioneer Memorial Stage. Flaherty's music underscores perfectly the panoramic story combining historical and fictional figures from turn-of-the-century America. This award-winning musical should anchor the strong PTC season, beginning with David Auburn's Proof (Sept. 18-Oct. 5) and including Macbeth (Feb. 19-March 8) and John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World (March 26-April 12).
Both SLAC and PTC are located in Salt Lake City; the third Utah LORT theatre is several hours south in Cedar City. In its expanded fall season (Sept. 19-Oct 19), the Utah Shakespearean Festival will include a Shakespeare play for the first time: Twelfth Night will run in repertory with I Hate Hamlet and You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown in the indoor Randall Theatre. USF founder Fred C. Adams says the next logical expansion, perhaps in 2003, will be adding a Christmas show.
—Claudia Harris
Arizona
Arizona has its share of exciting premieres and top-notch first run tours.
Arizona Jewish Theatre Company has started their 15th season by hiring a full-fledged artistic director, David Ellenstein. His first order of business is to direct a production of Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing (Nov. 2-17). AJTC will close their season with Richard Krevolin's uproariously sardonic version of King Lear, retitled King Levine (March 29-April 3). Joseph Bologna will direct.
No one can say we don't have our share of first-rate first-run tours. ASU's Gammage Auditorium will make Phoenix one of the ultra-select cities to play host to Mel Brooks' smash musical hit The Producers. The Little Old Ladies invade Jan. 14.
Actors Theatre of Phoenix will continue their oddly enjoyable trend of producing one-person shows without the extremely identifiable originator, casting local actor John Gentry to perform Spalding Gray's rant on health and healthcare, Gray's Anatomy (Jan. 24-Feb. 9). They will end their season with Rebecca Gilman's blistering examination of race relations in America, Spinning into Butter (April 25-May 11).
Last, but definitely not least, David Ira Goldstein's innovative tenure continues as Arizona Theatre Company finishes their 2002-03 season by performing three award-winning plays in a new rotating repertory. The shows—Michael Frayn's enigmatic masterpiece Copenhagen; Felix Pire's 2001 National Latino Playwriting Award-winner, Origins of Happiness in Latin; and Canadian playwright Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy—play in Tucson (April 10-May 3) and Phoenix (May 9-25).
—Mark S.P. Turvin
Southern California
One of the true joys of theatregoing in Southern California is the sheer diversity of producing companies. Drooling over annual season announcements is often more satisfying than the opening night glitz-and-glitter, and Sondheim's concept of "perpetual anticipation" easily captures the thrill and promise of the seemingly endless parade of world premieres. Season listings offer a voyeuristic window into the heart of the artistic soul of each company, and there's a provocative 2002-03 season ahead for adventurous audiences willing to travel and sample.
Start in Los Angeles with the East West Players' world premiere of the serio-comic, South Asia-themed Queen of the Remote Control, by Sujata G. Bhatt (Sept. 11-Oct. 6). Head north to Burbank for the world premiere of A Christmas Carole King (Dec. 4-29), presented by the madcap Troubadour Theater Company for Garry Marshall's Falcon Theatre, and a large dose of nostalgia and fun are virtually guaranteed for the holidays in Burbank.
The season turns to riveting drama when Rebecca Gilman's gripping Boy Gets Girl runs Jan. 28-March 9 at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, and lightens again when Mark Saltzman's Mr. Shaw Goes to Hollywood premieres from April 5-May 4 at the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach. The crusty Irishman heads to Tinseltown in this work by the Emmy Award-winning "Sesame Street" writer.
Closing this season of special picks is South Coast Repertory's Southern California premiere of Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy (May 23-June 29) and the Mark Taper Forum's production of the ninth play in August Wilson's phenomenal play cycle, Gem of the Ocean (July 31-Sept. 7, 2003).
—Jim Volz
San Francisco
The most promising theatrical events for the upcoming 2002-03 season seem to be world premieres, with one exception. Baz Luhrmann, director of the films Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge, will present his first theatrical venture in the United States with his version of Puccini's La Bohème, which plays the Curran Theatre (Oct. 1-Nov. 10) prior to its New York opening at the Broadway Theatre on Dec. 8. Baz's Bohème premiered in Australia in1990 and became the biggest hit in the history of the Sydney Opera House. It is being presented here as part of the Best of Broadway series.
After the world premiere in 1997 of Spring Storm (an unproduced play by Tennessee Williams), the Marin Theatre Company has been granted access to film and play scripts that have been heretofore unpublished by the Williams Estate. Consequently, in 2003, MTC will premiere a "new" Tennessee Williams Project (Jan. 9-Feb. 9).
San Francisco's two gay theatres offer intriguing premieres. The New Conservatory Theatre presents The Men from the Boys, Mart Crowley's sequel to his landmark play of 1968, The Boys in the Band (Oct. 16-Dec. 8), and Theatre Rhinoceros offers a new play by John Fisher, whose Medea, the Musical! broke local records. Titled Amnesia, it tells of an opera critic who undergoes a sexual identity crisis during a performance of Puccini's Tosca (Jan. 16-Feb. 14).
—A. J. Esta
Oregon
Oregon Cabaret Theatre of Ashland unwraps a new package in what has become one of its popular yuletide traditions, closing 2002 with the Snow White and Several Dweebs, the premiere of the most recent of its English holiday pantomimes, and the fourth panto in OCT's 17 seasons (Nov. 15-Dec. 31).
For yet another flavor of the yule feast, Actors' Theatre, located in Talent, Ore., offers Inspecting Carol (Nov. 21-Dec. 30), created by Daniel Sullivan and the Seattle Repertory Theatre. The comic conflict arises when a small theatre casts, in its production of A Christmas Carol, someone who is mistaken for an inspector from the National Endowment for the Arts. Do matters really get all Scrooged up?
Actors' Theatre follows the Christmas comedy with its world premiere production of Andrea Stolowitz's Knowing Cairo (Jan. 23-Feb. 23). It's the story of a feisty older woman, her compassionate caregiver, and the woman's oh-so-very-busy daughter.
For August 2003, Stardust Repertory of Grants Pass, Ore., returns to vintage melodrama with its revival of East Lynne. The play had an extended run in a specially built outdoor theatre in Grants Pass, on the banks of the Rogue River, in 1959, the centennial year of Oregon's statehood. Robert Watt, then age 12, now artistic director of Stardust Repertory, sold soft drinks at the centennial play. The 2003 production will be in the Rogue Theatre. Built in the 1930s as an art-deco movie house, it is now devoted to stage work.
—Alvin Reiss
Seattle
Seattle's ongoing economic blues have hit its box offices, and a lot of administrators and artistic staff have been nibbling their nails as a result. But despite this, several upcoming seasons show diversity, originality, and an occasional sign of something truly different.
Intiman's original adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America has just opened, directed by Bartlett Sher to much fanfare and good advance notice (through Aug. 25). It's followed by a production of Molière's Scapin (Sept. 13-Oct. 12), directed by Christopher Bayes, who lent a hand to last season's excellent Servant of Two Masters.
ACT Theatre's production of Charles Mee's Wintertime (Aug. 22-Sept. 17) isn't quite a world premiere (it's pipped to the post by three days by the ever-prescient La Jolla Playhouse), but fans of Mee's oddball sensibilities are pretty excited in any case. And ACT's most recent artistic director, Gordon Edelstein, returns to town for the world premiere of The Education of Randy Newman (Oct. 24-Nov. 17), a New York-bound musical based on the sprightly music and wry observations of the cult singer-songwriter.
But the biggest collection of shows this autumn is up on Capitol Hill, thanks to the new fall dates for the Seattle Fringe Theatre Festival. This year's festival is the largest ever, with 97 companies—including 20 from out of town—performing over 500 shows on nine different stages. Out-of-town visitors include the Shamans from Budapest and the Zero Boys from New York, while Seattle participants include about three-quarters of the town's non-Equity actors.
—John Longenbaugh