Winner of the 1994 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, NJ's McCarter Theatre has announced its 1997-98 season, one which appears to be as notable for its directors as its authors.
Here is the McCarter Theatre 1997-98 season line-up:
Sept. 16-Oct. 5: June Moon, George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner's 1929 comedy with music, about a young man's initiation into the desperate world of Tin Pan Alley songwriting. Cynthia Nixon and Albert Macklin starred in the Off-Broadway mounting, with Macklin receiving a Village Voice OBIE for his work. After the McCarter, a commercial run Off-Broadway later in the season is likely.
Starring at McCarter are Macklin, Robert Ari, Becky Ann Baker, Michael Countryman, Bruce W. Coyle, Amy Hohn, Tasha Lawrence, Geoffrey Nauffts, Jessica Stone and Lee Wilkof.
Mark Nelson, who will play Einstein in the upcoming national tour of Picasso At The Lapin Agile, directs Moon, which opens in NJ Sept. 19.
For more information on June Moon, please see the Playbill On-Line story, "Drama Dept. To See Moon Rise In New Jersey."
Oct. 21-Nov. 19: The House Of Bernarda Alba, Lorca's Spanish tragedy about a matriarch obsessed with the purity of her five daughters. The show opens Oct. 24. Jan. 20-Feb. 10, 1998: Cymbeline, Shakespeare's romantic drama about evil potions, lost sons and Roman gods. The show opens Jan. 24, 1998.
March 17-April 5, 1998: Richard Greenberg's Safe as Houses, a world premiere, will be staged by artistic director Emily Mann. The play is set on a summer evening in 1980 when the young guest of a privileged family inadvertently learns more about his hosts' private lives than he bargained for. As a result he is pulled into the family's spiral of secrets. betrayal and passing time. Mann called Safe as Houses "Greenberg's finest play to date and a major American drama."
During the 1997-98 season Greenberg will have two other premieres of his work. Hurrah at Last will world premiere at the South Coast Repertory Theatre; and Manhattan Theatre Club will host the East coast premiere of Three Days of Rain. His other plays include Eastern Standard, Night and Her Stars, The Extra Man and The American Plan.
May 5-May 24, 1998: The Captain's Tiger, Athol Fugard's autobiographical story of a young writer haunted by a cherished photograph of his mother as a young woman. The show opens May 8, 1998.
Fugard directs and stars in the play (as he did in Valley Song), which premiered in Pretoria, South Africa in late August. Following the opening night, Fugard jotted a note to McCarter's artistic director Mann, who was also in attendance: "...a thrilling launch last night. Individual response after the show leaves me in no doubt we have on our hands a play that works."
Classical music, world music, dance and jazz series will also be on the McCarter schedule. For information on The McCarter Theatre, on University Place in Princeton, NJ, call (609) 683-8000.
--By David Lefkowitz & Laura MacDonald
