After closing in New York on Oct. 31, Warren Leight's Side Man will now end its extended run in Chicago on Nov 17. The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of the Tony-winning play began on Sept. 16.
Steppenwolf ensemble member Gary Cole joined the cast on Oct. 24, replacing fellow company member Rick Snyder in the role of Gene, the story's side man trumpet player. Cole is probably best known from the television series "Midnight Caller." Rondi Reed plays Terry, Gene's long suffering wife, while Garret Dillahunt play their peace-making son, Clifford. Anna D. Shapiro directs.
Side Man won the 1999 Tony Award as best play, also nabbing a Tony for actor Frank Wood. The production began a run at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater, Nov. 3. Andrew McCarthy and Michael O'Keefe star in the DC mounting.
Also closing this weekend is the Steppenwolf production of Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth, playing in the Garage space through Nov. 14.
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The Steppenwolf mainstage season runs as follows:
* Hysteria (Nov. 26,1999-Jan. 22, 2000, opening Dec. 5), Terry Johnson's comedy about Sigmund Freud's last days in England, in 1939, directed by John Malkovich.
* Marber's Closer (Feb. 3-March 26, 2000, opening Feb. 13), with Abagail Deser directing. Closer's quartet of dysfunctional romantic partners were originally played on Broadway by Natasha Richardson, Anna Friel, Rubert Graves and Ciaran Hinds, under Marber's direction.
* Gary Sinise will star as McMurphy and Amy Morton as Nurse Ratched in Dale Wasserman's adaptation of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, (April 6-June 4, 2000, opening April 16). Terry Kinney will direct. Sinise and Kinney are co-founders of Steppenwolf. The show will be presented at Steppenwolf by arrangement with Michael Leavitt and Fox Theatricals. As for a possible transfer to Broadway in the 2000-01 season, a production spokesperson told PBOL (March 25), "It's our hope that will happen; Fox Theatricals owns the New York rights, and that's why we're with them."
* Valparaiso (July 6-Aug. 27, 2000, opening July 16), Don DeLillo's exploration of one man's ordinary business trip to Valparaiso, IN., directed by Frank Galati. In Valparaiso, which premiered earlier this year at MA's A.R.T., a man who took the wrong plane to a mysterious destination now finds himself the obsessive focus of interviews and talk shows. With Valparaiso, world-renowned novelist DeLillo ("White Noise," "Libra" and "Underworld") made his second venture into the theater world. His first play, The Dayroom, premiered at the A.R.T. in 1986. The novel "Libra," about Lee Harvey Oswald, was adapted into a play by Malkovich and produced by Steppenwolf in 1994.
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The 1999-2000 season at Steppenwolf's Studio Space runs as follows:
* Her Name Was Danger (Nov. 17-Dec. 12), a Lookinglass Theatre Steppenwolf co- production, created and directed by David Catlin.
* The Infidel, by Bruce Norris (Feb. 24-March 26, 2000), directed by Anna D. Shapiro.
* Redmoon's Hunchback (May 17-June 11, 2000), a Redmoon Theater-Steppenwolf co production, by Jim Lasko, based on Victor Hugo's novel, music by Michael Zerang.
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The 1999-2000 Steppenwolf Garages season runs as follows:
* Austin Pendleton's Orson's Shadow (Jan. 13-Feb. 13, 2000); Orson Welles, Laurence Oliver, Vivien Leigh, Joan Plowright and Kenneth Tynan are the quintet featured in actor-director-dramatist Austin Pendleton's latest work.
--By Robert Simonson
