Williamstown Theatre Festival veterans such as Blythe Danner, Kate Burton and Eric Stoltz, along with newcomers to the Massachusetts event like Sara Gilbert and Bill Irwin, will be featured in this summer's line-up of new and classic plays, which runs June 14 through August 27.
Danner, who has appeared in dozens of WTF plays, will lead the cast of the fest's season opener, Noel Coward's Tonight at 8:30. Williamstown will present six of original ten one-acts which made up Coward's play. The one-acts will be divided into two programs, which will be performed in repertory by different casts.
A monstrously complicated undertaking, Michael Greif (Rent) will direct Program A, while Anne Reinking pilots Program B. Danner and Collins will be featured in the Program A only, which includes Hands Across the Sea -- about a family of rude Brits who, after inviting some party guests from the U.S., forget who they are and neglect them completely -- as well as We Were Dancing and Family Album. Program B features d'Amboise and Irwin in Star Chamber, Shadow Play and Red Peppers, the last about a husband and wife vaudeville team who comically argue backstage between their worn-out routines.
Next in the WTF line-up is a revival of Lanford Wilson's 1970s hit, The Hot L Baltimore, July 5-16. Joe Mantello will direct Sara Gilbert, best known as one of the daughters on the sitcom "Roseanne."
Kate Burton and Harris Yulin will star in Jon Robin Baitz's new adaptation of Ibsen's classic, Hedda Gabler, July 19-30. Burton appeared at WTF in The Factory Girls last summer. Yulin was recently seen on Broadway in The Price, a production which originated at Williamstown. The Ibsen will later travel to the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, Long Island. Moss Hart's Light Up the Sky, Aug. 16-27, will be directed by Christopher Ashley and star Eric Stoltz, known from films like "Mask" and "Killing Zoe," and NYC theatre productions as Three Sisters and The Importance of Being Earnest. Stoltz recently was seen at WTF in 1998's The Glass Menagerie.
On the smaller Nikos Stage, David Lee will direct Joel Fields’s romantic comedy How I Fell In Love, June 28–July 9. Lee is the creator and executive producer of "Frasier."
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Other productions on the WTF roster include: Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, directed by Darko Tresnjak, which will play Aug. 2-13 on the Main Stage; Austin Pendleton's meditation on fame and the theatre, Orson's Shadow (June 14-25), on the Nikos Stage; the U.S. premiere of Simon Gray's The Late Middle Classes, directed by Roger Rees, July 16-Aug. 6; Pugliese's The Talk, directed by Scott Ellis, July 12-23.
