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Plays dominate Broadway's fall season
Tracy Letts is an actor, director and playwright. But it's as a playwright that he will make his Broadway debut. The drama is called "August: Osage County," and the production is coming pretty much intact from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. The play, which got strong notices in Chicago, concerns a venomous mother and her dealings with three daughters. Look for it Nov. 20 at the Imperial Theatre.
Mark Twain wrote a lot of plays, most of them not very good, according to Shelley Fisher Fishkin, a Stanford University English professor and Twain scholar. It was Fishkin who rediscovered one of the better ones — "Is He Dead?" — in a file cabinet at the Bancroft Library at the University of California-Berkeley.
The play, in an adaptation by David Ives, will have its world premiere at the Lyceum Theatre on Nov. 29. The star is Norbert Leo Butz and the director Michael Blakemore. The plot concerns a group of starving artists who stage the death of their mentor in an effort to increase the value of his work.
"The 39 Steps" is one of Alfred Hitchcock's classiest movie thrillers, but who knew four actors — playing over 150 roles — could successfully transfer the 1935 film from screen to stage. Well, the adaptation, a comic homage by Patrick Barlow, was a big hit in London, and now its tale of a man who knows too much (hmmm, sounds like the title of another Hitchcock movie) arrives Jan. 10 at the Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre.
David Mamet hasn't had a new play on Broadway since "The Old Neighborhood" in 1997. A decade later, he's back with the world premiere of "November," a comedy about an American president named Charles Smith, played by Nathan Lane, a-dither in the days before a presidential election. Laurie Metcalf, late of television's "Roseanne," portrays Smith's aide. "November" faces the voters Jan. 17 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
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The parade starts with "The Ritz," Terrence McNally's 1975 farce about a refugee from mob vengeance who hides out in a gay bathhouse where he pretends to be a Broadway producer. The cast includes Kevin Chamberlin as the would-be producer, Rosie Perez as a bathhouse entertainer and Brooks Ashmanskas as a seasoned patron of the establishment. Joe Mantello directs the Roundabout Theatre Company production, arriving Oct. 11 at Studio 54.
From raunchy to refinement with "Pygmalion," George Bernard Shaw's tale of a professor who seeks to make a lady out of a Cockney flower girl. Jefferson Mays is the tutor, Henry Higgins, and Claire Danes, his pupil, Eliza Doolittle. The Roundabout Theatre Company production, directed by David Grindley, opens Oct. 18 at the American Airlines Theatre, for a run through limited engagement.
It's been 18 years since Chazz Palminteri brought the Bronx to life off-Broadway with his one-man show, "A Bronx Tale." Now more than a dozen residents of the borough are coming back to the stage in this production, directed by Jerry Zaks and opening Oct. 25 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.
The nose has it, and this time around, it's being played by Kevin Kline. One of the theater's most venerable romances comes back to Broadway with a revival of Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac," arriving Nov. 1 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. Kline is Cyrano, Jennifer Garner his beloved Roxane and Daniel Sunjata, the handsome soldier who also loves her. David Leveaux directs this translation and adaptation by Anthony Burgess.
Directors love "Cymbeline," one of those lesser-known Shakespeare plays that seem to cry out for a concept. Its mixture of comedy, tragedy and fantasy make it prone to directorial flourishes.
This time around, the director is Mark Lamos and his cast includes Jonathan Cake, Michael Cerveris, John Cullum, Martha Plimpton and Phylicia Rashad. The curtain for the Lincoln Center Theater production at the Vivian Beaumont rises Dec. 2.
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Revivals of William Inge plays on Broadway have been rare. Now, his first hit, "Come Back, Little Sheba" (1950), is getting a reappraisal, courtesy of Manhattan Theatre Club. S. Epatha Merkerson, a veteran of TV's "Law & Order," stars as Lola, a blowzy, lonely housewife _ a role that won Shirley Booth a Tony and an Academy Award. Look for "Sheba" to follow "Mauritius" into the Biltmore, opening Jan. 24.
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But for those who want to really plan, check out a theater poster in Shubert Alley, that pedestrian thoroughfare between 44th Street and 45th Street in the heart of the Times Square theater district.
Already up is an advertisement for "Billy Elliot," the big British musical by Elton John and Lee Hall and based on the film about a young boy who dreams of dancing. The poster proclaims the show's first New York performance: Sept. 17, 2008, at the Imperial Theatre.
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