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Upcoming Shows
Curtain Times
On Fridays and Saturdays, curtain times are at 7:30 p.m.
For special Sunday showings (Musicals only) curtain times are at 2:30 p.m.
Double Bill:
| Brundibar (Musical) |
Contact with the Enemy |
Music by Hans Krása
Libretto by Adolf Hoffmeister |
By Frank Gilroy |
May 2-18
Brundibar (Musical)
Performed by the children of the concentration camp Theresienstadt in occupied
Czechoslovakia, and adapted to suit the musical instruments available in the camp: flute,
clarinet, guitar, accordion, piano, percussion, four violins, a cello and a double bass,
this opera shares elements with fairytales such as Hansel and Gretel. Aninka and Pepícek
are fatherless sister and brother. Their mother is ill, and the doctor tells them she
needs milk to recover, but they have no money. They decide to sing in the marketplace, to
raise the needed money, but the evil organ grinder Brundibár chases them away. However,
with the help of a dog, a cat and a lark, and the children of the town, they are able to
chase Brundibar away in turn, and sing in the market square and earn the money they need
for milk to save their mother. The opera contains obvious symbolism in the triumph of the
helpless and needy children over the tyrannical organ-grinder, but no overt references to
the conditions under which it was written and performed. However, certain phrases were to
the audience clearly anti-Nazi, such as: He who loves justice and will abide by it, and
who is not afraid, is our friend and can play with us." Most of the participants in
the Theresienstadt production, including the composer Krása, were later exterminated in
Auschwitz.
Directed by Ralph Hyman, Music Direction by Lori Isner.
Contact with the Enemy
Set in 1993, this one-act drama portrays two veterans of World War II, a businessman and a
writer, who meet by chance in front of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. In short
order, they realize they knew each other once, having served in the same army
division—and had been among the soldiers to liberate one of the lesser-known camps,
Ohrduf-Nord. As they enter the museum, examine the exhibits, eventually find their
recollections solicited by the guide and recorded by the volunteer historian,
uncomfortable echoes of those events cause unexpected, long-suppressed revelations to rise
to the surface—one in particular quite devastating.
Directed by Alan Douglas.
2008 -- 2009 Season
Sweeney Todd (Musical)
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by Hugh Wheeler
June 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22
This allegory of capitalism and its selfish qualities won nine Tony awards including Best
Musical and Best Book. Its characters are haunting and its music is delightfully dark and
amusing. This horror-musical hybrid tells the story of a once carefree barber, Sweeney
Todd, who was horribly wronged by a powerful judge. The barber returns from exile
determined to have his revenge. He teams up with Mrs. Lovett, the pie maker, who longs for
her pies to be edible. Sweeney, the demon barber of Fleet Street, takes to cutting some
throats along with some hair, and the love-struck, energetically devious, and ultimately
despondent Mrs. Lovett bakes his victims into the most delicious ‘meat’ pies in
London. Working its way under the viewer’s skin, this intimate production shows us
that sometimes melodrama is the most effective vehicle for capturing basic truths about
the human condition.
Directed by Andy Hall, Music Direction by Lori Isner.
Godspell (Musical)
Score by Stephen Schwartz; book by John-Michael Tebelak
July 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27
Based on the Gospel according to St Matthew, Godspell deals with the last days of
Jesus. Yet it is something more - a religious experience, a demonstration of joy, and a
celebration of the family of man. Godspell is cheerfully irreverent, spirited,
1oving, sprinkled with wry humor and bolstered with a good selection of songs—rock,
folk, country and pop—all neatly woven in and around the parables and teachings of
Jesus. However, it is a show that is more respectful than it is respectable. Basically, Godspell
is an agape — a love-feast —dedicated to light and joy and love.
Directed by Jamie Scott Blakey, Music Direction by Lori Isner.
Southern Baptist Sissies
By Del Shores
August 22, 23, 29, 30 September 5, 6
A roller coaster of a play that takes audiences from heights of hilarity through
outrageous anger, and into caves of depression and out again, this political and religious
commentary is the story of four gay men in a Southern Baptist Church in Texas and the
various ways they cope when they discover urges within themselves that go against the
teachings of their church. The damage of religion that preaches intolerance and foments
self-hatred and the repercussions of this brand of religion are seen throughout the
boys’ trek from pre-adolescence to adulthood: the pain, the doubt, the self-loathing,
the confusion. The script weaves together the characters’ stories inserting Bible
passages that support, contradict and call into question the fundamentalists’
teachings about homosexuality.
Directed by Ralph Hyman.
Vital Signs
by Jane Martin
September 12-13
With new signs of off-beat humor, rage and imagination in the female voice, Jane Martin
proves again the infinite resonance of monologue form. Moving in new directions, Martin
introduces a gallery of characters who shatter expectation, reinvent the ordinary and
dignify the bizarre. With humor and pointed satire, the eclectic characters in Martin's
play provide glimpses into the minds and hearts of over thirty complex women in this
funny, unnerving, perceptive and offbeat tour-de-force for mature audiences. These
monologues offer a collage about contemporary woman in all her warmth and majesty, fear
and frustration, her joy and sadness.
Directed by Julie Atkins.
The Pillowman
by Martin McDonagh
September 26, 27, October 3, 4, 10, 11
A kind of macabre fable, The Pillowman is a viciously funny and savage play which
tells the tale of Katurian, a fiction writer living in a police state, who is interrogated
about the gruesome content of his short stories, and their similarities to a number of
bizarre incidents occurring in his town. A detective story which takes unforeseen twists
and turns, the production won the Drama Critics Circle Award and the Olivia Award for Best
Play, and two Tony Awards. In style, The Pillowman is somewhere between the
Brothers Grimm and Quentin Tarantino, with stories which return to the nightmare quality
embodied in the world's original fairy tales. Dealing with the dangers of recognizing and
dealing with child predators, this is not a play for children or for those easily upset by
stage violence.
Directed by Alan Douglas.
for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf
by Ntozake Shange
Starring Felicia Richardson
October 17-18
This Obie Award winner has excited, inspired, and transformed all sorts of people from
black nationalists to feminist separatists who might never have set foot in the theater
but who came to experience Shange's firebomb of a poem. Passionate and fearless, Shange's
words reveal what it is to be of color and female in the twentieth century. A
groundbreaking dramatic prose poem written in vivid and powerful language that resonates
with unusual beauty in its fierce message to the world, this choreopoem deals with love,
abandonment, rape, and abortion.
Directed by Felicia Richardson.
Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens (Musical)
Music by Janet Hood
Lyrics and additional text by Bill Russell
November 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23
This moving and dramatic and musical theater piece is a celebration of lives lost to AIDS
told through free-verse monologues with a blues, jazz and rock score. With book and lyrics
by Tony Award-nominated Bill Russell (Side Show ) and music by Janet Hood, this
rarely seen work tells stories that are touching, heartwarming and often surprisingly
humorous. The songs reflect the feeling of the living…the people who have felt the
loss of so many friends and loved ones.
Directed by Steve Marshall, Music Direction by Jeannie Smith.
The History Boys
By Alan Bennett
December 5, 6, 12, 13, 19, 20
Winner of six Tony Awards including Best Play of 2006 in addition to three Laurence
Olivier Awards, The History Boys is about staff room rivalry, the anarchy of
adolescence, and the purpose of education. Both a very funny comedy and a deeply moving
drama, this entertaining and compassionate play concerns eight unruly but bright, funny
high school seniors trying to get into college while a maverick English teacher seeks to
broaden their horizons in undefined ways and a young history teacher questions the methods
and aims of their schooling. The audience will find multiple layers and themes, including
growing up, the wider purpose of education in adult life, pederasty, teaching methods,
homosexuality, and the English education system. Packed with superb one-liners, this is a
play of depth as well as dazzle, intensely moving as well as thought-provoking and funny.
Directed by Ralph Hyman.
Joe Egg
By Peter Nichols
January 16, 17, 23, 24, 30, 31
Joe Egg, based on Nichols' own experiences of raising a handicapped child, is a
gem that illustrates how tragedy and comedy can co-exist in one play. With its sharp
humor, cunning use of vaudeville techniques within a drawing-room play and unsettling
arguments about euthanasia, this masterpiece deserves its place in Britain’s National
Theatre's list of the 100 most significant plays of the twentieth century. The play
centers on a British couple who are struggling to raise their only child, a severely
handicapped girl with whom they cannot communicate. She is incontinent and unable to
communicate. Taking care of her has occupied nearly every moment of her parent's lives
since her birth, and this has taken a heavy toll on their marriage.
Directed by Duane Jackson.
The Fever
by Wallace Shawn
Starring Alan Douglas
February 6-7
In this 90-minute social and political commentary on privilege and conscience, the
well-to-do but nameless American narrator of this blistering monologue lies alone on the
bathroom floor suffering from a high fever as the power goes out in his dreary hotel room
in a poverty-stricken country "where my language isn't spoken." In this
third-world country the night before a political execution is to take place beneath his
window the following day, the speaker struggles to come to terms with the realities of
inequality. Far from the glib comforts of his own life, he struggles with memories and his
own conscience which are challenged by the misery and poverty he sees.
Over the course of his long night, the American begins to think of himself and his nation,
his relative wealth compared to those around him both at home and abroad, the sense of
entitlement that seems part and parcel of living in the United States, and the many crimes
that are committed in his name. Neither the rationalizations and explanations, nor the
lies (large and small) all conscious persons tell themselves for peace of mind, afford him
any solace. With compassion, eloquence, and ruthless self-scrutiny, he discovers that
having good intentions toward the dispossessed is not enough; the politically correct are
guilty themselves unless they take action.
Directed by Alan Douglas.
The Last Five Years (Musical)
by Jason Robert Brown
February 20, 21, 27, 28 March 6, 7
In this personal and intimate musical, Jason Robert Brown takes the conventions of
Broadway and sends them spinning into the 21st century. A savvy New Yorker connected to
the issues of big-city life, Brown uses his wit and insight to tell a contemporary story
about a couple falling in and out of love. The story explores a five-year relationship
between Jamie Wellerstein, a rising novelist, and Cathy Hiatt, a struggling actress. The
show uses a novel form of storytelling in which Cathy travels backwards in time (beginning
the show at the end of the marriage), and Jamie travels forwards (starting with the
couple's first date). The two actors' only direct interaction takes place mid-point,
during the wedding sequence. Funny and uplifting, the show captures some of the most
heartbreaking and universally-felt moments of modern romance.
Directed by Andy Hall, Musical Direction by Steve Whaley.
Lonely Planet
By Steven Dietz
March 13, 14
This most entertaining and least didactic entry in the “plays-about-AIDS”
category, Lonely Planet refuses to wallow in the pain caused by the deaths of
friends and lovers. Instead Dietz has fashioned a memorial to those who have departed
while offering a road map of sorts for those who live on. The central question of Lonely
Planet is, “What is the purpose of a life?” One answer becomes: as a member of a
community, one must pay attention to the world, bear witness, realize its problems, and
help solve them rather than ignore them.
Directed by Duane Jackson.
Truth! Reconciliation?
A World Premier by Grif Stockley
March 27, 28, April 3, 4, 10, 11
Truth! Reconciliation? is a world premier production, written by Little Rock
playwright Grif Stockley, which examines Arkansas's racial history from slavery to the
present. Five people, three white and two African American, come together to discuss plans
for a commemoration event for the 50th anniversary of the Central High Crisis in 1957. In
the course of the discussion, the characters (all from Little Rock) are forced to confront
their own ideas and feelings about the state's racial past, as they try to decide whether
reconciliation is even possible.
Directed by Ralph Hyman.
Vincent
By Leonard Nimoy
Starring Tom McLeod
April 24, 25
Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you're put
here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in
calling," -Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890).
Based on more than 500 letters exchanged between Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo,
this one-man play examines the passion and torment of the extraordinary artist's life and
death as seen through his brother's eyes. The play begins in a Parisian lecture hall, a
week after Vincent's death. The audience is a crowd of "artists, friends,
anyone" to whom Vincent's brother Theo is about to read his eulogy. Through
flashbacks and letters, he uncovers the story of a man who, despite his immense talent,
only sold one of his paintings during his lifetime. We are shown Vincent as a beautiful,
sensitive, tortured, and misunderstood soul, a passionate and tormented painter. But
Vincent was much more than a madman artist; he was a man who, after years of wandering and
searching his soul, discovered his dream, his purpose for being on this planet and then
spent the next ten years of his life trying to do justice to this gift. Photos and slides
of his works flash across the back wall, heightening the sense of documentary.
Directed by Tom McLeod and Allison Pace.
Rabbit Hole
By David Lindsay-Abaire
May 8, 9, 15, 16, 22, 23
Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Rabbit Hole is about a family
recovering from the death of a child. A wrenching look into grief and healing leavened
with generous spoonfuls of humor, this satisfying strange mix leaves you feeling vaguely
guilty for laughing even as your laughter relieves you. Lindsay-Abaire wrote the drama
after fellow playwright Marsha Norman - who was his teacher at Julliard - told him to
write a play about something that frightened him. A father, Lindsay-Abaire began shaping a
story about a husband and wife who lose their only child in a freak car accident. In the
aftermath of this life-shattering accident, a young husband and wife find themselves
drifting perilously apart. Rabbit Hole charts their bittersweet search for
comfort in the darkest of places...and for a path that will lead them back up into the
light of day.
Directed by Andy Hall.
