Photo By Broadway In Cincinnati

Broadway in Cincinnati will offer the North American premiere of Shangri-La, a show conceived in China, at the Aronoff Center this fall.

So you're wondering where to spend your hard-earned dollars on theater productions this fall? There's something for everyone, as the song would have it. In fact, the rollicking 1962 show containing that song -- Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (the song title is "Comedy Tonight") -- will be one of the first shows of the fall season (Sept. 8-Oct. 7 at the Cincinnati Playhouse on its Marx stage).

Forum is an early work by Sondheim, in fact, the first for which he wrote music and lyrics. (Before he was 30 Sondheim made a name for himself writing lyrics for two classic shows, West Side Story and Gypsy.) For this one, he worked with writers Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, using themes and situations from comedies by the Roman playwright Plautus and creating a vaudeville farce about a scoundrel of a slave, a pair of young lovers, a braggart general and a couple of foolish old men. (Nathan Lane turned a revival of Forum into a Broadway hit in 1998.)

The Playhouse, which received the regional theater Tony Award in 2004, chooses its musicals carefully, since an ample supply of them pass regularly through the Aronoff Center, courtesy of Broadway in Cincinnati. But Sondheim's works are less frequent fare locally, largely because they're more intellectual and acerbic. Such is definitely not the case with Forum, which set out to be a lowbrow audience pleaser.

The Playhouse kicks off its Shelterhouse Theatre season with another familiar body of music, although from a different era altogether: Randal Mylar's Love, Janis (Sept. 29-Nov. 6) re-creates the life and music of boozy, bluesy Rock belter Janis Joplin. Her songs, including "Piece of My Heart" and "Me and Bobby McGee," were anthems for the '60s. This show should grab the baby boomers, who grew up on Joplin's plaintive squalling prior to her death from an accidental drug overdose in 1970.

If you're looking for a stage classic without show tunes nor Rock anthems, check out the first offering of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, Thornton Wilder's classic, Our Town (Sept. 8-Oct. 9). CSF co-founder and longtime favorite Nick Rose returns to the Race Street stage to play the Stage Manager who guides audiences through several days in the lives of the citizens of Grover's Corner, N.H., early in the 20th century. This script from 1938 has been presented by many high schools and community theaters, but CSF's production is likely to be worth seeing. While it's not Shakespeare, it is a script that has endured.

CSF has a fine touch with classic American plays: Its springtime production of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? just won the 2005 CEA for Outstanding Play, with a cast recognized as the season's best ensemble performance. Those credentials suggest Our Town, also directed by CSF's artistic director, Brian Isaac Phillips, will be given a rich and textured treatment.

To complete the array of great season openers, you'll want to snag a ticket for the regional premiere of Lynn Nottage's award-winning play, Intimate Apparel (Sept. 7-25) at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC). Perhaps you know ETC specializes in staging new works or works that haven't been seen locally. D. Lynn Meyers, ETC's producing artistic director, has an uncanny instinct for fine works, and she's picked a winner with this 2003 script, which was selected as for The Best Plays Theater Yearbook 2003-2004 and earned the American Theatre Critics Association's Steinberg Prize for best play of the year. This show will be presented by many regional theaters this season; ETC is one of the first to be bringing it forward, so if you're one of those theater fans who likes to be ahead of the curve, you'll want to see this one.

Intimate Apparel is the story of Esther, a seamstress in 1905 New York City who makes fancy undergarments for prostitutes and rich women. Despite her seductive clients, Esther has reached the age of 35 without much luck in love, but that changes when she begins a correspondence with George, a Barbadian laborer who is working on the Panama Canal. They marry and her life takes a new, unexpected path. It's a story about prejudice and passion, love and forgiveness, issues not terribly different a century later. While ETC has assembled a strong season, Meyers might be leading off with the most powerful gun in her arsenal.

Other productions worth seeing include:

Jean Anouilh's The Lark (Sept. 22- Oct. 1), re-creating the story of Joan of Arc and her trial for heresy, presented by Clear Stage Cincinnati.

Paul Rudnick's Jeffrey is being reprised by Ovation Theatre Company (Oct. 26-29). The show, a warm-hearted romance against the backdrop of AIDS, drew strong audience response in 2004, so Ovation is bringing back most of the original cast, including CEA winner Christine Dye.

Jonathan Larson's Tick, Tick ... Boom! will be staged by the Know Theatre Tribe (Oct. 13-Nov. 12). It's a semi-autobiographical piece by the man who created Rent (and died of a cerebral hemorrhage before his hit opened).

Three shows at UC's College-Conservatory of Music: The very funny backstage comedy, Noises Off (Oct. 27-30), and the delightful compilation of Gershwin tunes, Crazy for You (Nov. 17-20), and a Studio Theater production of Floyd Collins (Oct. 20-22), Adam Guettel's innovative musical about a man trapped in a coal mine who became the focus of one of America's first media frenzies in 1927.

Cincinnati will host the North American premiere of an unusual new musical from China, Shangri-La (Nov. 15-27, pictured above), a fusion of traditional ethnic Folk music and modern dance drawing on legends from the province of Yunnan. ©