Ensemble Theatre
Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati has just announced an exciting season of premieres it will present starting in October. That’s a month later than usual for the Over-the-Rhine theater due to the finishing touches of construction on its newly expanded Vine Street facilities. A block away on Jackson Street, Know Theatre has also assembled an array of adventurous works for the coming season. Without a doubt, the neighborhood will be hopping with theatergoers, especially with Cincinnati Shakespeare Company also launching its first season in its new Elm Street theater.
ETC will kick off its 32nd season with This Random World (Oct. 10-Nov. 4, 2017) another play by Steven Dietz. (ETC this week opens Dietz’s Bloomsday; he’s the most frequently produced playwright across ETC’s three decades.) This show, which debuted a year ago at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, is a comedy of missed connections that asks how often we travel parallel paths without noticing.
The upcoming holiday season will feature another world-premiere work by writer Joseph McDonough and composer David Kisor, The Dancing Princesses (Nov. 29-Dec. 30, 2017). They have crafted numerous holiday fairy tale musicals for ETC, including last year’s popular Cinderella: After Ever After. Their new family-friendly show is about five uniquely different princesses in search of understanding, acceptance and love.
In January ETC will give Stephen Karam’s 2016 Tony Award-winning play, The Humans, its regional premiere (Jan. 23-Feb. 17, 2018). The much praised script — it was also a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize — is about a family’s Thanksgiving dinner that goes off the tracks as relationships unravel and secrets are revealed. This is a fine drama that ETC’s thoughtful audiences will revel in seeing, especially because excellent guest director Michael Evan Haney will stage it.
The regional premiere of Lolita Chakrabarti’s Red Velvet (March 6-31) will be staged by guest director Brian Isaac Phillips, Cincy Shakes’ artistic director. It’s a fascinating true story about a young African-American actor called on in 1833 London to step into the role of Othello after legendary actor Edmund Kean collapsed onstage. Ian Aldridge was the first actor of color to play the role, more than 200 years after Shakespeare wrote the classic tragedy. (Cincy Shakes is staging Othello March 2-24, so this will afford a fascinating opportunity to see both works in close proximity.)
Following another regional premiere of a show that hasn’t been settled yet (April 24-May 19, 2018), ETC will conclude its season with the return of Hedwig and the Angry Inch (June 5-30, 2018). ETC first produced the story of the gender-crossed Glam Rocker in 2001, following Over-the-Rhine’s so-called “riots,” when many patrons were nervous about attending theater in the neighborhood. It was a must-see show that ETC re-staged in 2003. It’s likely to be even more popular in the much-changed environs 17 years later.
Know Theatre
Before I share the news of Know Theatre’s new season, here’s a news flash about the kind of adventurous theater this company offers Cincinnati audiences. Last August, Know produced Todd Almond’s Girlfriend, employing songs from singer-songwriter Matthew Sweet’s 1991 album of the same name to a story of first-time love between a college-bound jock and an aimless boy in Nebraska. (In my CityBeat review, I called it a “sweet contemporary love story” featuring “believable young people caught up in the happy, breathless moments of first love.”) I just learned that Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, is touting same show’s Washington, D.C. premiere (April 17-June 10, 2018). Signature is a much-admired theater; it received the 2014 Regional Theatre Tony Award, the recognition bestowed on the Cincinnati Playhouse in 2004. Trend-setting Signature’s Girlfriend will be onstage nearly two years after we saw it locally at Know. Just sayin’.
So what does Know have in store for 2017-18? At their Jackson Street venue, they’ll offer a gender-bending re-imagining of Adam Szymkowicz’s The True Story of Robin Hood (July 29-Aug. 19, 2017), followed by a drama, Jacqueline Goldfinger’s The Arsonists (Sept. 22-Oct. 14, 2017), telling a tale inspired by the Greek tragedy Elektra.
Know’s holiday show will be a stage adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved novel, Neverwhere (Nov. 25-Dec. 17, 2017), about slipping into “London Below,” a world of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels. Right after the holidays will be a world premiere by Karen Hartman, SuperTrue (Jan. 19-Feb. 10, 2018), a funny and earnest work about turning 40. In March it’s James Ijames’ Kill Move Paradise, a drama recently premiered at the National Black Theatre.
Know’s final production (April 13-May 12, 2018) will be another work by Lauren Gunderson, the regional premiere (and only the second staging) of Ada & the Engine, a music-laced story of life, friendship and edgy dreams about the future set in 19th-century England. The prolific Gunderson is one of America’s most produced writers. Locally her shows have entertained audiences at the Playhouse (The Revolutionists) and Know (Silent Sky and Toil and Trouble). Scripts by women constitute half of Know’s season — a commendable commitment to countering the dominance of male playwrights at many other theaters.
Two more installments of Serials! are scheduled, one in July-August and another in Winter 2018, plus “Binge Watch” presentations in August of two Serials! shows presented in one sitting rather than spread out over multiple weeks. The 15th-annual Cincinnati Fringe is set for May 29-June 9, 2018.
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 5, 2017.
