The Court Theatre's patrons will be paying a lot of calls on the Shubert Theatre in Chicago's Loop this spring. The nonprofit's 2001-02 season continues in February with a special arrangement of the national tour of Michael Frayn's Copenhagen. The heady drama about a real-life 1941 meeting between two nuclear physicists will play the Shubert from Feb. 5 to Feb. 24 (extended from the originally announced Feb. 14). The run is considerably shorter than the average stay of a Court Theatre show, but company spokesman Jay Kelly said there will be no problem accommodating all Court subscribers.
Later that spring, Court-goers will be able to purchase discounted tickets for the Chicago stop of the national tour of David Auburn's Proof, also at the Shubert. The play will run March 26-April 7, 2002. The Court has reserved several hundred seats, which are currently being assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.
Len Cariou, Mariette Hartley and Hank Stratton will star in Copenhagen. Philip Bosco, Blair Brown and Michael Cumpsty played the roles on Broadway.
Cariou will be forever known as the original Sweeney in Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. He also created a role in the composer's A Little Night Music. Other New York roles include Broadway's The Speed of Darkness and Off-Broadway's Mountain, a one-man show about Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas.
Hartley recently starred in the premiere of A.R. Gurney's Buffalo Gal at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Stratton recently appeared in the Broadway revival of The Man Who Came to Dinner. *
Both plays have a special meaning for the Court, which is located on the campus of the University of Chicago. The Court press office noted that "the Manhattan Project achieved the first self-sustaining, controlled, nuclear chain reaction" at U. of C, under the direction of Enrico Fermi and his team of scientists. As for Proof, Auburn is a U. of C. Alumnus. The playwright set the drama on the back porch of a Hyde Park house and made one of its characters, a mathematician,a professor at the university, while another character is one of his students.
The remaining 2001-02 schedule runs as follows:
• Copenhagen by Michael Frayn, Feb. 5-24
• Hamlet by Shakespeare, Feb. 14-March 24
• My Fair Lady by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, April 18 May 26
The Court is located at 5535 S. Ellis Avenue. For more information, call (773) 753-4472.
