Stages Repertory Theatre will continue their tradition of producing Off Broadway theatre outside of Houston's theatre district with the 1999 2000 season, beginning Sept. 8. Upcoming productions include Craig Lucas' The Dying Gaul, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, Shakespeare's R&J and the world premiere of Jessica Goldberg's Refuge, set for an Off-Broadway run in 2000. (Last season, Stages featured Pitchfork Disney, Nixon's Nixon, The Moon is Blue and Nicky Silver's The Maiden's Prayer).
Opening the 1999-2000 season will be Full Gallop, the one-woman bio play of former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, running Sept. 8-Oct. 3 on the Arena Stage. Written by Mark Hampton and Mary Louise Wilson (who starred in the original Off-Broadway run), Gallop finds Vreeland, fashion guru for nearly five decades, after she has been fired from Vogue and is in search of money to begin her next venture. Stages regular Sally Edmundson (All Over, Quills, The Tempest) stars, with artistic director Rob Bundy directing.
On the Thrust Stage, Lucas's The Dying Gaul, directed by Bundy, will run Oct. 13-Nov. 7. Gaul is the story of a young gay writer in Hollywood who enacts terrible revenge on the wife of the studio executive he has been sleeping with in payment for the cruel game she plays with him in an internet chat room.
The currently running Off-Broadway musical, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change follows Gaul on the Thrust Stage with performances Nov. 23-Jan. 2, 2000. The Joe DiPietro-Jimmy Roberts comedy musical revue looks at the pitfalls of modern dating with songs like "A Stud and a Babe," "I Will Be Loved Tonight," "Always A Bridesmaid," "On the Highway of Love," "Shouldn't I Be Less In Love With You" and "I Can Live With That."
Jan. 19-Feb. 13, Shakespeare's R&J will take the Arena Stage. An adaption of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, R&J places the classic story of star-crossed lovers in an oppressive parochial school for boys, where four students decide to act out the play by playing all of the roles. Bundy will direct. Refuge, a Stages developmental project with writer-in-residence Goldberg, takes a look at "Gen X" offspring, separated from their parents, and the confusion, lack of love and fear they face. Refuge won the 1999 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a national women's playwriting award that has honored such writers as Paula Vogel and Wendy Wasserstein in past years. Bundy directs the drama on the Thrust Stage from Feb. 23 March 19.
Actress Shelagh Stephenson's first play, The Memory of Water, runs April 12-May 7 on the Thrust Stage, directed by Deborah Kinghorn. Water is a comedy of family with three sisters coming together after the death of their mother on the Cape Breton coast.
Subscriptions for the Stages season are $186-$72 and available by calling (713) 52-STAGES. Single tickets are $46-$17. Stages Repertory Theatre is located at 3201 Allen Parkway at Waugh.
-- By Christine Ehren
