Come Aug. 13, it'll be Wintertime in La Jolla.
The La Jolla Playhouse will premiere the latest work from Charles L. Mee through Sept. 15 in a production directed by the playwright's Big Love collaborator Les Waters. The 2002 season at the San Diego venue will also include the premieres of When Grace Comes In by An Almost Holy Picture's Heather McDonald, Hoyle in One, a one-man retrospective by Lion King actor Geoff Hoyle and Jose Rivera's Adoration of the Old Woman.
Mee, a playwright, historian and editor, also penned First Love, True Love, Another Person is a Foreign Country, Trojan Women: A Love Story, The Berlin Circle (directed by Tina Landau), and Orestes. Wintertime opens Aug. 18.
McDonald's Grace looks at midlife crisis through a woman who is forced to reevaluate herself as her being and her body change. Sharon Ott, formerly of Berkeley Repertory, directs. When Grace Comes In plays July 30-Sept. 1 with an opening Aug. 4.
Hoyle starred as Zazu in Broadway's The Lion King, but before that success, he toiled for 25 years in the New Vaudeville, clowning with Bill Irwin in the Pickle Family Circus and with the Cirque du Soleil. While Hoyle's last solo show, The First Hundred Years, was a history of vaudevillian stage and television, Hoyle in One looks at the latest work of the breed. Hoyle in One previews June 11 for a run through July 14. Opening night is June 16. Rivera contemplates coming-of-age in Puerto Rico in Adoration of the Old Woman, playing Sept. 17-Oct. 20. In the work, commissioned for the Playhouse, politcally unrest awakes the unpleasent past of a family's elderly matriarch, while her 16-year-old American granddaughter deals with issues of her own. Adoration of the Old Woman opens Sept. 22.
Kicking off the season is Tartuffe, directed by Des McAnuff and starring Jefferson Mays as Moliere's hypocrite (May 14-June 16), while ending 2002 is Mabou Mine's Peter & Wendy (Sept. 27-Nov. 10).
Work will also begin in fall, 2002 for the Joan and Irwin Jacobs' Theatre, a new space for the Playhouse. The theatre will open for the 2004 season.
La Jolla Playhouse is located on the corner of La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road. For season tickets, call (858) 550-1010. La Jolla Playhouse is on the web at http://www.lajollaplayhouse.com.
— By Christine Ehren
