In and Around New York
Just off Manhattan, a full-to-bursting open-air season is already underway at Little Island (through Sept. 28), a park in the Hudson River that looks from afar as if it was built atop a giant’s stash of stiletto heels. Highlights include Kate Tarker and Dan Schlosberg’s “The Counterfeit Opera: A Beggar’s Opera for a Grifter’s City” (through June 15); Sarah Gancher’s bluegrass re-envisioning of “Eugene Onegin,” directed by Rachel Chavkin (July 30-31); and “The Tune Up,” a music-filled evening of new work by Suzan-Lori Parks (July 30-Aug. 3).
And at the newly renovated Delacorte Theater in Central Park, Shakespeare in the Park makes a glittery return with Saheem Ali’s production of “Twelfth Night” (Aug. 7-Sept. 14), starring Lupita Nyong’o as Viola, Sandra Oh as Olivia, Peter Dinklage as Malvolio, Daphne Rubin-Vega as Maria and Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Andrew Aguecheek.
Amid the hive of theater development that is Poughkeepsie in summertime, New York Stage and Film’s dozen public performances at Marist College (July 11-Aug. 3) include new works by Donja R. Love, Carly Mensch, Hansol Jung, Kirsten Greenidge and John Patrick Shanley, while a reading of Drew Gasparini and Alex Brightman’s musical “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” is part of the Powerhouse Theater season (June 20-July 27) at nearby Vassar College. In Garrison, under the tent at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, “The Comedy of Errors” (June 6-Aug. 2) plays in rep with Thornton Wilder’s “The Matchmaker” (June 8-Aug. 3), followed by Dave Malloy’s chamber musical “Octet” (Aug. 11-Sept. 7).
The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, about an hour north of Philadelphia, takes an expansive approach to the Bard. You can see “Hamlet” (July 9-Aug. 3) and its Tom Stoppard spinoff, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” (July 17-Aug. 2). Iambic pentameter not your jam? You can also catch the musical “The Producers” (June 11-29) or the Lorraine Hansberry play “A Raisin in the Sun” (June 25-July 13). Now that’s range.
Northeast
Western Massachusetts is a travel destination for the Berkshires’ hilly beauty and for the summer seasons of its established theaters, including Barrington Stage Company (June 3-Oct. 12), in downtown Pittsfield; Shakespeare & Company (June 19-Oct. 12), in bucolic Lenox; and Berkshire Theater Group (through Oct. 26), in both Pittsfield and Stockbridge.
Also the eminent Williamstown Theater Festival, which after some bruising recent years is trying on a new identity. Its season (July 17-Aug. 3) is curated in part by the playwright Jeremy O. Harris (“Slave Play”) and described in publicity materials as “a multidisciplinary theatrical eruption.” Centered on Tennessee Williams — with Pamela Anderson, Tony Danza and April Matthis in “Camino Real,” and Robert O’Hara directing “Not About Nightingales” — it is slated to include the world premiere of Harris’s “Spirit of the People,” with Ato Blankson-Wood among the cast.
With a gazebo on the lawn and a sculpture garden across the way, the strollable grounds are as much a part of the experience at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Mass., as the polished productions in the rustic wooden theater. The five-show season is vacationing-family friendly, including “Anastasia: The Musical” (July 16-Aug. 2) and “Come From Away” (Aug. 6-30). Over in Falmouth, the focus of the Cape Cod Theater Project is very different: developmental readings of new works. This year’s plays are Heidi Armbruster’s “Scarecrow” (July 3-6), Paloma Nozicka’s “Both” (July 10-12), Jake Brasch’s “How to Draw a Triangle” (July 17-19) and Milo Cramer’s “No Singing in the Navy” (July 24-26).
For lovers of musical theater, two destinations in the Northeast are sure bets — about three hours from each other, they could make for a road trip to remember. Maine’s Ogunquit Playhouse is banking on a mix that includes the new favorite “Come From Away” (through June 14) and golden-age classics like “Guys and Dolls” (June 19-July 19). That last one has a dynamite cast that includes Rob McClure, Ephraim Sykes and Bianca Marroquín. Further south, in Connecticut, Goodspeed Musicals is presenting “Ragtime” (through June 15) then pivoting to the Elvis Presley jukebox “All Shook Up” (June 27-Aug. 17), both at its newly renovated Victorian-style home on the banks of the Connecticut River.
South
Two intrepid siblings battle soul-chilling evil in an interplanetary quest to rescue their father in “A Wrinkle in Time,” Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 novel about the utility of anger, the power of love and the deadliness of tyranny. Now the playwright Lauren Yee (“Cambodian Rock Band”) and the composer Heather Christian (“Oratorio for Living Things”) have adapted that adventure into a musical that is making its world premiere (June 12-July 20) at Arena Stage in Washington. Under the direction of Lee Sunday Evans, the cast includes Taylor Iman Jones as Meg Murry, the young misfit heroine, and Amber Gray as the supernatural Mrs. Whatsit.
For more new works head to the Contemporary American Theater Festival (July 11-Aug. 3) in Shepherdstown, W.Va. This season, it is introducing five world premieres in repertory at three venues. The authors include Lisa Sanaye Dring (“Sumo”), Lisa Loomer (the book for the musical “Real Women Have Curves”) and Mark St. Germain (“Freud’s Last Session”).
Midwest
Forget Netflix: One of the pleasures of summer is to find a repertory house and binge as many different shows as possible. A great place to start is the Wisconsin treasure American Players Theater, which is putting its ace troupe through its paces by rotating nine shows. The bigger productions, in an outdoor amphitheater perched atop a small hill, include “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (June 7-Oct. 5), “Picnic” (June 20-Sept. 13) and “Anna in the Tropics” (Aug. 1-Sept. 26). The indoor slate includes “‘Art’” (June 13-Sept. 28) and the premiere of Gavin Dillon Lawrence’s “The Death of Chuck Brown” (June 24-Sept. 25), a play about community and gentrification in Washington.
And for good measure, let’s add the Guthrie Theater, in Minneapolis, which is pouring its all into Joseph Haj’s revival of “Cabaret” (June 21-Aug. 24). One casting move immediately jumps out: The versatile singer and performer Jo Lampert is playing the Emcee.
Mountains
The high desert in Utah may be a hiking, biking, climbing paradise, but what if, at the end of the day, people just want to see a show? Enter the Utah Shakespeare Festival, founded in 1961 to meet that demand. On the campus of Southern Utah University in Cedar City, it has an outdoor stage for its Shakespeare plays and indoor stages for the rest — seven professional productions in all this season (June 16-Oct. 4). If “Antony and Cleopatra” or “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” is your idea of a post-camping palate cleanser, they’ve got you.
Over in Colorado, Creede Repertory Theater was created in 1966 to help revive a dying mining town high in the San Juan Mountains. Against all odds, both the company and the town are still there. The company is now celebrating its 60th anniversary with a core of four crowd-pleasers: the musicals “Xanadu” (through Sept. 7) and “The Fantasticks” (June 21-Sept. 14), and the plays “The 39 Steps” (May 31-Sept. 20) and “Silent Sky” (June 28-Sept. 6).
The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, on the campus of the University of Colorado Boulder, keeps its eyes on the prize. Its two productions this summer are by you-know-who: “The Tempest” (June 7-Aug. 10), with the formidable Ellen McLaughlin playing Prospera, and “Richard II” (July 5-Aug. 10).
West
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is a magnet for tourism to the small city of Ashland, in the Rogue Valley just north of the California border. On stages both indoors and out, this year’s nine-show repertory season includes productions by Lisa Peterson (“As You Like It,” through Oct. 25); Amanda Dehnert (“Into the Woods,” May 31-Oct. 11); and Tim Bond, the festival’s artistic director (“Jitney,” through July 20). There are newer plays in the mix, too: James Ijames’s Pulitzer Prize winner,“Fat Ham” (through June 27); Octavio Solis’s “Quixote Nuevo” (July 9-Oct. 24); and Karen Zacarías’s “Shane” (July 31-Oct. 25).
Over in Southern California, San Diego is a theater powerhouse, and its institutions stay busy in the summer. At the La Jolla Playhouse, Jocelyn Bioh’s comedy “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” is on through June 15, and the end of its run will overlap with the premiere of Eliana Theologides Rodriguez’s “Indian Princesses” (June 10-July 6). A few weeks later, La Jolla — a famous incubator for new musicals — is presenting the premiere of “The Heart” (Aug. 19-Sept. 21), a tuner based on the Maylis de Kerangal novel of the same title, which follows the journey of a transplanted heart over the course of 24 hours.
Nearby, the Old Globe has three venues in its Balboa Park complex. Among this summer’s offerings, you can catch the world premieres of Deepak Kumar’s “House of India” (through June 8) and Anna Ziegler’s “The Janeiad” (June 21-July 13), or revel in a revival of the backstage farce “Noises Off” (July 6-Aug. 3). Of course, there is Shakespeare, too — the company’s biggest stage, which is outdoors, was modeled after his own in London — with “All’s Well That Ends Well” (June 8-July 6) and “The Comedy of Errors” (July 27-Aug. 24).
What better way to spend a summer evening than to watch poetic shenanigans against a darkening sky?
The post Dozens of Festival Plays Worth Traveling to This Summer appeared first on New York Times.
