BAM's theatrical season will launch Jan. 7, 2011, with the Abbey Theatre production of Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman, which will run through Feb. 6, 2011 (opening Jan. 12). James MacDonald helms the Frank McGuinness adaptation of the play that is currently playing its world-premiere run in Dublin.
Leading the cast are Tony Award winner Duncan (Private Lives), two-time Tony Award nominee Rickman (Private Lives, Creditors) and Tony Award nominee Shaw (Medea, Happy Days). The company will also include Cathy Belton, John Kavanagh, Amy Molloy, Marty Rea, and Joan Sheehy.
According to BAM, "Former bank manager John Gabriel Borkman (Rickman) emerges from prison for embezzlement, destitute and desperate for a comeback. As he paces and plots alone in his upstairs room for eight years, his long-suffering wife Gunhild (Shaw) concocts her own plans to restore the family’s reputation. Into this feverishly claustrophobic environment enters Gunhild’s twin sister Ella (Duncan), Borkman’s former love whom he abandoned to secure the power that ultimately destroyed him. Her unannounced arrival and unsettling request propels this devastating and darkly comic play to its shattering and surprising conclusion."
Academy and Tony Award winner Rush reunites with director Neil Armfield (the duo famously brought Exit the King to Broadway in 2009) for Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Madman, which is set to run Feb. 11-March 12, 2011 (opening Feb. 16).
Adapted by David Holman with Armfield and Rush, Diary of a Madman will first premiere at Australia's Belvoir Street Theatre in December, which was also the first home of Exit the King. Australian actress Yael Stone will costar. Based on Gogol's short story, the play centers "on the life of a minor civil servant, Poprischin, in the repressive era of Nicholas I. Written in first-person, diary- entry format, the story follows the protagonist’s yearning for a senior official’s daughter and his elaborate delusions, among them his imagined royal status and communication between animals. Only as Poprischin descends into madness does he attain a measure of greatness. The story satirizes state bureaucracy in 1830s St. Petersburg and relates an average man’s quest for individuality in an indifferent world," BAM states.
Edward Hall's all-male troupe Propeller will return to BAM with the U.S. premiere of The Comedy of Errors from March 16-27, 2011. Shakespeare's farce about a pair of identical twins separated at birth puts a family in crisis.
The innovative British theatre company Cheek by Jowl will stage its stripped-down take on Shakespeare's tale of murder and greed, Macbeth, April 5-16, 2011. Declan Donnellan will direct the production that will star Will Keen and Anastasia Hille as the murderous couple.
Following its debut at the Donmar this December, Grandage's production of King Lear, with Olivier Award winner Jacobi in the title role, will arrive at BAM April 28-June 5, 2011 (opening May 4). The tragedy about a fallen king and those who seek his throne will reunite the Tony Award-winning creative team behind the Donmar's Red, including Christopher Oram (set and costume design), Neil Austin (lighting design) and Adam Cork (sound design and original music).
Additional 2011 programming at BAM includes Igor Stravinsky's The Nightingale and Other Short Fables, directed by Robert Lepage. The heralded production, which fills the orchestra pit with some 20,000 gallons of water and places the chorus and orchestra on stage with the cast, will run March 1-6, 2011.
BAM will also host DanceAfrica 2011 (March 27-30, 2011) and Ballet Nacional de Cuba's La Magia de la Danza (June 8-11, 2011).
For tickets visit BAM.
