Seattle's A Contemporary Theatre has announced its 1999 season, choosing six shows to run on the mainstage from April through November. Among this year's offerings are three West Coast premieres, one world premiere, one musical and one American classic.
Arthur Miller's The Crucible starts off the ACT season, running from Apr. 30-May 30. Set during the witch hunts of 1692 Salem, MA, The Crucible follows the havoc a group of young women wreak when they claim they have been possessed by the devil. Miller wrote the 1952 play as a reaction to the McCarthy anti-communism hearings.
Second in the season is the Polly Pen-Peggy Harmon musical, The Goblin Market. Adapted from an 1862 poem by Christina Rossetti, the erotic tale of two sisters who retreat back to the nursery of their youth and into a dangerous fantasy of goblins and forbidden fruit runs from June 4-July 4).
Stonewall Jackson's House, Jonathan Reynolds' comedy, premiered Off-Broadway at the American Place Theatre in 1997. This look at political orthodoxy makes its West Coast debut on the ACT mainstage from July 9-Aug. 8.
The world premiere of a new thriller, Temporary Help, runs Aug. 13 Sept. 12. Written by David Wiltse, Help kicks off with the arrival of a virile farmhand at a house in Nebraska where the husband and wife involve him a psychological game of cast-and-mouse. ACT artistic director Gordon Edelstein staged a workshop of the show earlier at the Long Wharf Theatre in Connecticut. Two 1998 New York shows will make their West Coast debuts at the end of the '99 season. Warren Leight's play, Side Man, will run Sept. 17-Oct. 17. Currently running on Broadway at the Golden Theatre, Side Man is a journey through the memories of Clifford, a young man who watched his trumpeter father's obsession with jazz destroy his family.
Communicating Doors, Alan Ayckbourn's latest comedy-thriller, follows a young prostitute as she stumbles on a murder plot in London's Regal Hotel, where the connecting doors to her suite throw her back and forth in time. Doors will finish off the ACT season, running Oct. 22-Nov. 22.
For subscriptions to ACT's 1999 Season ($200-$88), call the ACT box office at (206) 292-7676.
-- By Christine Ehren
