Directed by Rylance with Claire van Kampen, Nice Fish, according to press notes, "begins with two men ice fishing on a frozen lake and proceeds into the realm of the mythic, with a taciturn giant on a snowmobile and the last blizzard of the season about to begin."
Nice Fish is one of 11 mainstage productions that will be featured during artistic director Joe Dowling's 2012-13 season.
The 50th anniversary season will kick off with the previously announced celebration of Christopher Hampton. That celebration commences on the Wurtele Thrust Stage with Tales from Hollywood (Sept. 15-Oct. 27, 2012), which is described as a "historically based, sharp-witted story of German intellectual émigrés such as Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann who escaped the Nazi regime and found an uncertain new life in America." Ethan McSweeny will direct.
The Hampton celebration will also feature the new drama Appomattox (Sept. 29-Nov. 11, 2012), a "wide-ranging work of historical scope encompassing the Civil War and Civil Rights eras of American history," directed by David Esbjornson.
Christopher Bayes will direct Carlo Goldoni’s commedia dell’arte masterpiece The Servant of Two Masters, which runs Dec. 1, 2012-Jan. 20, 2013. The New Year at the Guthrie will kick off with Eugene O’Neill’s American classic Long Day’s Journey into Night, which runs Jan. 12-Feb. 23, 2013. Directed by artistic director Dowling, the cast will feature Helen Carey and Peter Michael Goetz. Jon Robin Baitz’s Pulitzer Prize finalist Other Desert Cities, which is currently enjoying an acclaimed Broadway run, will play the Guthrie Feb. 9-March 24, 2013, in a production helmed by Peter Rothstein.
Britain’s all-male company Propeller will perform Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew Feb. 27-April 6, 2013, in repertory on the thrust stage. Edward Hall will direct as part of the Guthrie’s WorldStage Series.
The world premiere of Crispin Whittell’s The Primrose Path, directed by Tony winner Roger Rees, will be presented April 27-June 15. Based on the novel "Home of the Gentry" by Ivan Turgenev, Primrose Path concerns "a member of the 19th-century Russian gentry who returns to his neglected country estate after escaping his adulterous wife in Paris, this drama explores the tensions between wishing for a simpler life amid the complications of the self and the inescapable past."
This season will also include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park, which is currently in previews on Broadway. Bruce Norris' race-themed drama will play the Guthrie June 1-Aug. 4. A director will be announced at a later time.
The 2012-13 Guthrie season will conclude with Garson Kanin’s Born Yesterday, which will run July 6-Aug. 31. John Miller-Stephany will direct.
“I’m extremely enthusiastic to announce a season so varied and immediate,” said Dowling in a statement. “We feel confident that we are continuing to fulfill our mission of enlivening the classics while fostering excellent new work and productions of national relevance. With the Guthrie looking forward to its next 50 years, I’m thrilled by what I see on the road ahead.”
For ticket information visit www.guthrietheater.org.
