Now that it’s 2018, it’s time to start mapping out theatergoing for the months ahead.
If it’s Broadway hits you seek, plan to see two touring productions coming to the Aronoff Center for the Arts: Waitress (Jan. 9-21) is about a woman who bakes pies and struggles to find happiness (based on a 2007 movie); and School of Rock: The Musical (Feb. 21-March 4), by Andrew Lloyd Webber, is about a wild and crazy musician who becomes a substitute teacher and recruits fifth-grade kids to play in a battle of the bands. (Jack Black starred in the 2003 movie.)
Two more excellent shows with Broadway cred will turn up at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati. The Humans (Jan. 23-Feb. 17) by Stephen Karam is a 2016 Tony Award winner (also a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize) about a dysfunctional family gathering. And to conclude the current season, ETC is reviving Hedwig and the Angry Inch (June 5-July 1), a major hit for the Over-the-Rhine theater in 2003 and 2005. University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music grad Todd Almond recreates his memorable turn in the title role.
Be the first to see a pair of new scripts, thanks to the Cincinnati Playhouse. Be Here Now (Feb. 9-March 11) by Deborah Zoe Laufer is a charming story of two lost souls who intersect under unusual circumstances. Sooner/Later (March 24-April 22) by Allyson Currin uses a metaphysical twist to navigate the never-easy paths of romance, marriage and parenting. The Playhouse commissioned both world premieres, continuing its multi-year encouragement of and support for women playwrights. Also noteworthy will be Know Theatre’s staging of Ada & The Engine (April 13-May 12) by Lauren Gunderson. It’s about Ada Byron Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron, and her soulmate, Charles Babbage, inventor of the first mechanical computer. Gunderson is America’s most-produced playwright this season; her play The Revolutionists was a hit when its premiere happened at the Playhouse in 2016, and it’s now being staged at many other theaters.
There will be an unusual intersection of subject matter when Cincinnati Shakespeare Company produces Othello (March 2-24) and ETC stages Red Velvet (March 6-31) by Lolita Chakrabarti. The latter is about the first African-American actor to take the role of Othello, in London in 1833.
Ed Stern made the Playhouse one of America’s best regional theaters during his two decades there. He’s still an active guest director in town and he’ll stage two classic shows at local theaters in the months ahead: Sam Shepard’s searing Pulitzer Prize winner Buried Child (Feb. 15-18) at Xavier University and Michael Frayn’s classic backstage comedy Noises Off (May 18-June 9) at Cincy Shakes.
Adventurous theatergoers love Martin McDonagh’s darkly comic dramas. His current movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is likely to be an award winner. So give his 2003 play The Pillowman (Jan. 26-Feb. 10) a look when Falcon Theatre produces it in Newport, staged by veteran director Ed Cohen. It’s about a fiction writer in a police state who is interrogated about gruesome short stories that are uncomfortably close to several child murders.
Another dark drama — this one at Know Theatre — comes from playwright James Ijames via Harlem’s National Black Theatre Company. It’s Kill Move Paradise (March 2-24), set in a netherworld where four young men who are dead contemplate what’s next for them.
Theater productions on university campuses offer more options. Northern Kentucky University presents the first part of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches (Feb. 14-24). History through the lens of Rock & Roll is what Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Feb. 2-4) is about at Xavier University. The esteemed British playwright Caryl Churchill is represented with Love and Information (Feb. 7-11), a troubling portrait of today’s world, at CCM.
For more mainstream fare, look to Cincy Shakes for a stage adaptation of the 1967 hit movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (Jan. 26- Feb. 17). Two classic musicals are onstage at the Covedale Center for the Performing Arts: Guys and Dolls (Feb. 15-March 11) and Oklahoma! (April 5-29). Happy theatergoing!
Contact Rick Pender: rpender@ citybeat.com
This article appears in Jan 3-10, 2018.
