Theatre Intelligence
Top Ten Reasons Why 2009 Will be a Summer of High Drama (So Get Your Tickets Now!)
1. Julianne Boyd knows how to breathe fresh life into classic musicals (as she did brilliantly with Follies four summers ago when Barrington Stage Company was based in Sheffield), and this year she’s directing Rodgers & Hammerstein’s magnificent Carousel on Barrington Stage Company’s main stage in downtown Pittsfield; it will run June 17 - July 11.
2. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley returns to stage The Jacksonian, her 8th play at Vassar’s Powerhouse Theater, which is celebrating its 25th year collaborating with New York Stage & Film.
3. It’s hard not to be happy listening to the music of Leonard Bernstein on a summer’s night, and Berkshire Theatre Festival will be doing a semi-staged version of his operetta Candide, directed by Ralph Petillo, in the intimate Unicorn Theatre (July 8 - August 15.)
4. If you’ve always wondered why The Fantasticks ran for 42 years Off Broadway (and how you somehow managed to never see it), the Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck will give you the opportunity to make up for the lapse; the musical runs May 29 - June 14
5. A stage version of the Mike Newell’s movie Enchanted April, which follows four English ladies on their vacation to Italy (and seems like a Merchant Ivory production), will be at The Ghent Playhouse from May 15 - 31.
6. A.R. Gurney and Sam Shephard are among our best living playwrights and their worlds could not be more different. Williamstown Theatre Festival will stage revials of Gurney’s Children and directed by John Tillinger (July 1 - 12), which will be followed by Daniel Goldstein’s production of Pulitzer Prize-winner Sam Shephard’s True West.
7. You probably know the 1956 film starring Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby (and Louis Armstrong as himself) but have you ever seen a stage version of High Society? The plucky Mac-Haydn Theatre kicks off its 41st season with the Cole Porter musical May 28 - June 7.
8. To make sure we are intellectually challenged as well as entertained, Bard Summerscape will present The Oresteia: Agamemnon, Choephori, and The Eumenides, the trilogy of plays by Aeschylus and translated by Ted Hughes, in various combinations, from July 15 - August 2.
9. If ever there were a Broadway show that was meant to be a community theater staple it’s Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man, and TriArts will no doubt give it a rousing, 76-trombone production at the Sharon Playhouse from August 6 - 23.
10. Stageworks in Hudson has grit, gumption, and champions new work such as Lucille Lichtblau’s Car Talk, which has its world premiere July 22 - August 9.
11. So who’s counting? If you missed Shakespeare & Company‘s muscular production of Othello last summer, you’ll have more than a dozen chances to see it performed in the Founders’ Theatre between July 3 and August 29.
