Artistic director Blake Robison’s ninth season at the Cincinnati Playhouse presents another fine balancing act, satisfying both theatergoers with an appetite for new material as well as those who love to see favorites returned to our city’s Tony Award-winning regional theater.
Robison says that the forthcoming season has “dexterity” and points to his “great love for family-friendly works.” The latter is evidenced in their season opener: The Wizard of Oz (Aug. 29-Oct. 4).
“We’re not trying to be a children’s theater, and we’re not just aiming to put the film onstage,” Robison says. “What we’ll offer will be freshened up.”
Audience members with long memories often recall Worth Gardner’s riotous 1982 rendition of the classic story based on L. Frank Baum’s novel; Robison’s production will use John Kane’s 1987 adaptation for the Royal Shakespeare Company with all the film’s familiar songs.
After Wizard of Oz, the next Marx mainstage show will be a world premiere by a Cincinnati-native playwright. That is, Keith Josef Adkins’ The West End (Oct. 17-Nov. 14). His Safe House was commissioned and launched by the Playhouse in 2014. Set in 1941, his new show tells an authentically Cincinnati story in its portrayal of a neighborhood populated by longtime descendants of German families intersecting with African-Americans migrating from the Deep South.
The mainstage will kick off the New Year with British actor/playwright David Haig’s Pressure (Jan. 23-Feb. 20, 2021). Set on D-Day — June 6,1944 — it follows a clash between a pair of meteorologists regarding the weather prospects for the historic invasion. The Playhouse’s production marks the first in the U.S. for this big hit from London.
Two crowd-pleasers round out the Marx season: Steel Magnolias (March 6-Apr. 3, 2021), Roger Harling’s beauty-salon tear-jerker with lots of humor, chatter and repartée. Robison calls it “theatrical comfort food” and suggests bringing “a box of hankies.” Audiences loved the Playhouse production back in 1989, and I bet it will repeat that success. The mainstage season concludes with another likely hit: Ken Ludwig’s Moriarty: A New Sherlock Holmes Mystery (April 17-May 16, 2021). His Baskerville was a best-seller in 2019, and this new tale of the famed British sleuth, another co-production with the Cleveland Playhouse, will appeal to families.
The Playhouse’s recently renamed Rosenthal Family Shelterhouse Theater stage will host more new works and a few classics. Up first is Tiny Beautiful Things (Sept. 12-Oct. 25). Based on Cheryl Strayed’s bestseller of the same title, it’s a one-woman show adapted by Nia Vardalos (writer and star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding). Using real-life letters and heartfelt responses from Strayed’s column, “Dear Sugar,” the show offers empathetic guidance about love and loss.
Robison calls it a story about taking care of oneself that is “open, honest and sincere.”
Katie Forgette’s Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help (Nov. 7, 2020-Jan. 3, 2021), which Robison calls “the best title of the bunch,” will be the holiday Shelterhouse offering opposite A Christmas Carol (Nov.25-Dec.27). Set in 1973, it follows a middle-class Irish Catholic family who are striving to maintain their reputation. With a nearly two-month run, it’s intended to offer some chaotic hilarity for seasonal theatergoers.
Another reprised favorite lands on the Shelterhouse stage next via Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill (Jan. 16-March 7, 2021), the story of singer Billie Holiday’s life (1915-1959). Told with honesty and salty humor, it was a popular production at the Playhouse in 1992, and the show has seen a resurgence of interest thanks to an award-winning 2016 Broadway production with Audra McDonald. With piano accompaniment, it features more than a dozen iconic Jazz standards that Holiday regularly performed.
Deborah Zoe Laufer’s world premieres at the Playhouse (Leveling Up, Be Here Now) have been well-received, and Robison is excited to produce another one of her scripts that he commissioned: Rooted (March 20-April 25, 2021). A woman, seeking escape from society, lives in a treehouse (she’s named Mabel); she researches plants and posts information on a YouTube channel. Things change, however, when she is surprisingly deemed a “New Age messiah.”
The Shelterhouse’s final production might qualify as a summation of old and new, nostalgic and family-friendly: Tenderly: The Rosemary Clooney Musical (May 8-June 27, 2021). It’s brought back by popular demand, according to Robison, who recounts many queries about “When is she coming back?” after the show’s successful production in late 2014. Cincinnati-based composing and playwriting team Janet Vogt and Mark Friedman have had considerable success with this show, and they have continued to refine it, now employing several different songs by “America’s familiar girl singer,” a native of Maysville, Kentucky, and a singer on radio station WLW before she rose to movie stardom. Robison calls her “an old friend who we can warmly embrace again.” Based on audience affection for this show, it could run beyond the listed closing date, since no further productions happen there until the fall.
For more info/tickets: cincyplay.com.
This article appears in Best Of Cincinnati 2020 (12098053).
