Off-Broadway follows Broadway's lead this fall with the late Horton Foote's The Orphans' Home Cycle. The nine-play marathon is currently on view at Hartford Stage under the direction of Michael Wilson. It will transfer to New York's Signature Theatre Company—which has done very well by Mr. Foote over the years—beginning Nov. 5.
Foote was a prolific man, and the nine plays have been around for some time. The long story begins with a father's death in Foote's fictional, small, Texas town of Harrison at the turn of the century, an event that causes his son Horace Robedaux to take "an odyssey through the darkest corners of the heart as he learns to become a husband, father, and patriarch." The tale is based partly on the childhood of Foote's father and the courtship and marriage of his parents. Some of the plays, such as Lily Dale and The Widow Claire, have previously been seen in New York.
Keeping watch over her father's work is actress Hallie Foote, as well as her husband, Devon Abner, who both appear in the series, as well as other old Foote hands like Maggie Lacey and James DeMarse.
photo by Aubrey Reuben |
photo by Aubrey Reuben |
Some lavishly produced plays appear to be more about what the actors are wearing than what they are saying. Love, Loss, and What I Wore actually is a play about garments, based on Ilene Beckerman's book of the same name. Adapted by film scribes Nora and Delia Ephron, the work is advertised as "a play about clothes and the memory they trigger, featuring a rotating cast of stage and screen actors." Part of the first rotation, beginning Sept. 21 at the Westside Theater, are Samantha Bee, Tyne Daly, Katie Finneran, Natasha Lyonne and Rosie O'Donnell.
photo by Mary Ellen Mark |
Otherwise, some heavy-duty theatre is on tap at the Public Theater, including a new LAByrinth Theatre Company production of Othello starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz, and directed by Peter Sellars (opening Sept. 27). Try and find a ticket, my friend. And rising young playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney will return to the Public with his Kushnerian-titled trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays Part 1 & 2, a script about an extended family and community in the Bayou that is so ambitious, apparently, that it required two directors: Tina Landau (Part 1) and Robert O'Hara (Parts 2 and 3). The second part of the trilogy, The Brothers Size, was previously staged at the Public, to general acclaim. The Public will also provide a home to avant garde master Richard Foreman, who will direct Willem Dafoe in his latest "philosophical comedy," Idiot Savant.
Is there more? Why of course there is! This is Off-Broadway after all, and, even though many of the choice playing spaces have closed in the past year or so, there are still many stages to fill. Some of the more eye-catching attractions include: Broke-ology, Nathan Louis Jackson's play about two brothers who are called home to take care of their ailing father, opening at Lincoln Center Theater on Oct. 5; Still Life, an MCC Theatre production of Alexander Dinelaris' play about a photographer at the pinnacle of her career who inexplicably shuts down, beginning Sept. 16 at the Lucille Lortel; Circle Mirror Transformation, Annie Baker's work about four lost New Englanders (among them, Reed Birney, Peter Friedman, and Deirdre O’Connell) who enroll in a community center drama class experiment, bowing at Playwrights Horizons on Sept. 24; A Boy and His Soul, Colman Domingo's new solo play about the experiences of a young man and his family in 1970s and 80s Philadelphia, opening Sept. 24.
Also on its way are Ordinary Days, Adam Gwon's musical about four young New Yorkers whose lives are unexpectedly interconnected by circumstance, at the Roundabout beginning Oct. 2; The Lady With All the Answers, in which Judith Ivey plays advice columnist Ann Landers, at the Cherry Lane from Oct. 7 on; What Once We Felt, a Lincoln Center Theater at The Duke production of Ann Marie Healy's play about a writer's journey through the political world of publishing, as her novel becomes the last print published novel ever, commencing Oct. 26; This, the latest by Melissa James Gibson, about the joys — and disappointments — of entering one's forties, at Playwrights Horizons starting Nov. 6; a revival of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band, at the Transport Theatre Company beginning in October; and Rebecca Gilman's adaptation of Carson McCullers' novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, from November at New York Theatre Workshop.
If you can't find something to like in that bunch, then your theatregoer's heart is a lonely hunter, indeed.
Writer's Note: A myriad of new Off-Broadway productions are on offer during the fall of 2009, and this overview is not meant to be exhaustive.