The 2000 summer line-up at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, MA, will boast actors Dylan McDermott, Claudia Shear, Kate Finneran, Kristen Johnston and Jame Warwick and director Christopher Ashley. The season will run June 14-Sept. 1 and play on two stages.
McDermott, the star of television's "The Practice," will star in Clifford Odets' classic Awake and Sing. The drama is about the stifling life of the poor Berger family, a clan living in a tenement in Depression-era Bronx.
The Odets will be followed by The Smell of the Kill, a black comedy by Michele Lowe. Kate Finneran, Kristen Johnston and Claudia Shear are three wives who plan revenge on their complacent, golf-loving husbands. Shear wrote and starred in Dirty Blonde, which played Broadway up until earlier this year. Johnston is currently acting in References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot at the Public Theater Off-Broadway. Finneran's many credits include Arms and the Man Off-Broadway and The Iceman Cometh on Broadway. Christopher Ashley, of Newyorkers and The Rocky Horror Show fame, will direct.
The other two mainstage productions both involve James Warwick. Warwick will direct the season opener, a new production of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, and will star in the season closer, a revival of My Fair Lady. Eric Hill will direct a cast which also features Maureen O'Flynn as Eliza Doolittle.
The Main Stage schedule runs as follows: • Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, directed by James Warwick, June 21-July 7 (opening June 22)
• Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing, starring Dylan McDermott, July 10-28 (opening July 11)
• The Smell of the Kill by Michele Lowe, directed by Christopher Ashley, July 31-Aug. 11 (opening Aug. 1)
• My Fair Lady, directed by Eric Hill, Aug. 14-Sept. 1 (opening Aug. 15)
The smaller Unicorn Theatre will feature a revival of Kenneth Lonergan's comedy This Is Our Youth, directed by Oliver Butler (June 14-July 14); August Strindberg's A Dream Play, directed by Eric Hill (July 18-Aug. 4); and A Pound of Flesh by Michael Bolus (Aug. 8-18).
For more information, call (413) 298-3368, or consult www.berkshiretheatre.org.
—By Robert Simonson
