The upcoming season marks the first for artistic director Blake Robison, who succeeds longtime Playhouse in the Park artistic director Ed Stern.
"Blake and I have known each other for many years now – he was an early, ardent supporter of my work when we were both on the East Coast – and I am deeply honored that he's selected Abigail/1702 to be part of his inaugural season at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, a theatre I've long admired. It's really the perfect place to tell this spooky, campfire story," Aguirre-Sacasa (Spider-Man, "Glee") said in a statement.
The Robert S. Marx Theatre season will open with Tony nominee Ken Ludwig's The Three Musketeers, running Sept. 1-29 under Robison's direction. It will be followed by the Neil Simon classic Brighton Beach Memoirs, staged by Steven Woolf, Oct. 13-Nov. 10. Also planned is the annual holiday production of A Christmas Carol, running Nov. 29-Dec. 30. Michael Evan Haney directs.
Robison will direct Abigail/1702, which will run Jan. 19-Feb. 17, 2013. According to the Playhouse, "What really happened to The Crucible's Abigail Williams after she stole through Salem's forest one dark night in search of a new life and new beginning? Ten years have passed since the infamous witch trials, but Abigail still struggles to atone for her sins, the ones history remembers — and darker ones that live in her heart. As she cares for a young sailor on the brink of death, a mysterious stranger from Abigail's past catches up with her, sending her on one final, suspense-filled quest for redemption."
Late Academy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful will play March 9-April 7, 2013. Timothy Douglas will direct. David Pichette and R. Hamilton Wright's stage adaptation of James M. Cain's Double Indemnity will follow April 20-May 18, 2013, under Haney's direction. Solo performer Daniel Beatty will offer his inspirational story Through the Night Sept. 22-Oct. 21 as the opening production of the Thompson Shelterhouse season. The musical revue Hank Williams: Lost Highway will follow Nov. 3-Dec. 30 under the direction of co-author Randal Myler, who penned the work with Mark Harelik.
Deborah Zoe Laufer's Leveling Up, a new world premiere about the age of virtual reality, will run Feb. 9-March 10, 2013, under the direction of Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's Wendy C. Goldberg. Here's how it's billed: "Four 20-somethings struggle to transition from college to a 'real' life that is rarely spent outside the glare of the video game monitors in their Las Vegas basement. What they find is a world of grown-up relationships that require levels of intimacy far beyond the social shield of technology. When one member of the circle is recruited by the NSA to pilot remote missiles, he's ill equipped to handle the moral ambiguities raised in this thought-provoking and often humorous play."
The final two productions will be Karen Zacarías' comedy The Book Club Play, running March 23-April 28, 2013; and Donald Margulies' Shipwrecked! An Entertainment – The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself), which will close the season May 11-June 16, 2013.
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