Tony winner Cherry Jones has dealt with a drunk landlord's son, swimming the English channel and picking the perfect husband while burdened with a huge inheritance, but her next challenge will be even tougher—leading a sex strike against an entire nation, when she stars in the company's staging of Lysistrata at Boston's American Repertory Theatre, directed by Andrei Serban. The new adaptation of the play, written by Larry Gelbert (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) with songs by William Bolcom and Arnold Weinstein, will run on the Loeb Drama Center May-June 2002, followed by a stint at the Prince Music Theatre in Philadelphia (June 15-30, 2002). Jones is due to star in Major Barbara at the Roundabout Theatre Company later this year.
Before Jones steps on the stage in the summer, however, ART will produce a mix of young playwrights and classic plays, including the world premiere of Adam Rapp's Stone Cold Dead Serious, February-March 2002.
This latest work from the writing brother of actor Anthony is the story of the Ledbetters, a suburban family suffering from the normal millenial afflictions - dropping out, drugs and addiction to QVC. Their teenage son Wynne makes the finales of a national video game contest, which brings him to New York City and threatens the family's existance. Marcus Stern, who directed last season's Nocturne, will again stage Rapp's work.
Stone Cold Dead Serious runs in repertory with Nikolai Gogol's comedy The Inspector General, in which a poor clerk pretends to be the inspector the town expects he is. After directing Mother Courage in 2000, Janos Szasz has been invited back to helm this project.
The 2001-02 season kicks off with two men who would be king. Yuri Yeremin brings Shakespeare's great tragedy Othello to the Loeb Drama Center Dec. 2001-02 in repertory with Luigi Pirandello's Enrico IV. Robert Brustein adapts and co-directs the tragicomedy with Karin Coonrod. For the New Stages production in the Hasty Pudding Theatre, ART gets Robert Sherwood's Absolution, a thriller about the aftermath three former high school friends suffer fifteen years after they commit a terrible crime. Absolution will play in April, 2002.
The final summer production in ART's season has not been decided, but the company is leaning towards Pamela Gien's The Syringa Tree, currently enjoying a successful Off-Broadway run.
For subscription information, call (617) 547-8300. The Loeb Drama Center is located at 64 Brattle Street. American Repertory Theatre is on the web at http://www.amrep.org.
