Many children have imaginary friends, but San Diego's Globe Theatres have a very unfriendly pair in the Nora Ephron-Marvin Hamlisch-Craig Carnelia work Imaginary Friends, making its world premiere Sept. 21-Nov. 3 in the Old Globe Theatre. The play with music, set to star Cherry Jones, is the most prominent of the newly announced productions for the Globe's summer-fall season.
Globe Theatre artistic director Jack O'Brien (The Full Monty, The Invention of Love) directs Imaginary Friends, a dissection of the bitter feud between playwright Lillian Hellman and novelist and novelist and critic Mary McCarthy. (McCarthy once said everything Hellman wrote was a lie including the words "and" and "the.") Jones, a Tony winner for A Moon for the Misbegotten and The Heiress, will play McCarthy. Christine Baranski ("Cybill," The Real Thing, Rumors) participated in New York readings as Hellman with Crazy for You's Harry Groener playing all of the play's male characters.
The Lowell Davies Festival Theatre outdoor space will see staging of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Aug. 25-Oct. 6. An adventure and a romance, this rarely performed play traces the journey of a young man through shipwrecks, riddles, jousts, loves won and lost and a final happy reunion with his family. Darko Tresnjak (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Goodspeed's A Little Night Music) directs.
Arthur Miller, represented by two revivals on Broadway in 2002, will see his All My Sons brought back in the Old Globe Theatre July 21-Aug. 31. Set in the years right after World War II, an airplane manufacturer has to come to grips with his choices which have saved his family, but injured and killed others. Daniel J. Travanti and Reed Diamond star in All My Sons, directed by Richard Seer.
The Globes Theatre's summer and fall festival will also include The Taming of the Shrew, directed by John Rando (All in the Timing) in the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre June 23-Aug. 4, Brian Friel's Faith Healer, directed by Seret Scott on the Cassius Carter Centre Stage July 14-Aug. 25 and Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy, directed by Brendon Fox on the Cassius Carter Centre Stage Sept. 8-Oct. 20. Single tickets to Globe Theatres productions are $40-$45. The Globe Theatres are located in Balboa Park. For reservations, call (619) 239 2255. The Globe Theatres are on the web at http://www.theglobetheatres.org.
