Looking for guidance regarding theater productions to catch this fall? Here are some shows categorized so you can zero in on those you’ll enjoy.
Great Literary Works Onstage
Theater has a way of telling stories — enacting them before a live audience — that vividly brings them to life. When great and familiar literary works become plays, the result is often truly revelatory. This fall, at least a half-dozen local productions offer insights into memorable tales.
John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany was a breakout bestseller in 1989. Cincinnati Playhouse artistic director Blake Robison kicks off his fifth season with this Sept. 3-Oct. 1 production of Simon Bent’s adaptation of the sprawling novel, an epic saga about friendship, destiny and the miracle of faith set in 1950s New Hampshire.
To launch its season, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company presents another classic text, The Diary of Anne Frank (Sept. 9-Oct. 1), adapted by Wendy Kesselman from the poignant and inspiring writing of an adolescent Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis with her family in a cramped Amsterdam attic.
Cincy Shakes has another classic story of a powerful, sensitive spirit in a different kind of captivity: Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man (Oct. 14-Nov. 5), featuring Giles Davies as a severely deformed man in 19th-century England.
Other classic tales this fall: Shakespeare’s tragic romance Romeo and Juliet (Sept. 29-Oct. 2) at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Depression-era epic The Grapes of Wrath (Sept. 29-Oct. 9) at Northern Kentucky University and a production of Frederick Knott’s Dial M for Murder (Nov. 4-19) at Falcon Theater.
Dramas to Make You Think
Playwrights take big ideas and humanize them, often enlightening circumstances we might have missed or perspectives we’ve never considered. Ayad Akhtar’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner Disgraced (Sept. 24-Oct. 23) at the Playhouse invites us to a contentious dinner party rife with some not-so-hidden prejudices in America today. At Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, Kimber Lee’s brownsville song (b-side for tray) (Oct. 11-30), a hit at the 2014 Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, is the story of a young man in the wrong place at the wrong time and the impact of his death on his family and friends.
August Wilson, one of America’s great playwrights, shows up on two stages this fall with scripts from his Century Cycle, chronicling the lives of African-Americans across the 20th century. The Playhouse stages Jitney (Oct. 15-Nov. 12), a story about gypsy cab drivers trying to make ends meet in 1977, and NKU offers Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Oct. 25-30) about a band of African-American musicians in a radio studio in the 1920s.
Over-the-Rhine’s Know Theatre offers two provocative shows: Pulp (Oct. 7-29), Joseph Zettelmaier’s film noir comedy set in the 1930s with a pulp fiction twist, and The Other Rhine: A Lovecraftian Horror (Oct. 22-31), an immersive event for Halloween by Cincy Fringe regular Hit the Lights! Theatre Co. Two more to keep in mind: Jim Leonard Jr.’s small-town drama The Diviners (Nov. 11-19) at Xavier University, a story about friendship between a mentally challenged man and a disenchanted preacher in 1930s Indiana, and Incline Theater’s God of Carnage (Nov. 17-Dec. 4), Yasmina Reza’s drama about head-butting parents whose kids’ playground altercation prompts erupts family warfare.
Comedies to Make You Smile
Sometimes a trip to the theater is just about having a good time, a few laughs and maybe getting a reminder about our humanity. This fall’s show most likely to do that is Larry Shue’s The Foreigner (Oct. 20-Nov. 13) at the Covedale Center. One of the funniest plays ever, it’s about a shy fellow who overhears more than he wants to. Cincy Shakes’ Much Ado About Nothing (Nov. 18-Dec. 10) portrays a perfect couple, the witty Beatrice and Benedick, who can’t stand each other.
Ensemble Theatre opens its season with Matthew Lopez’s heartwarming music-filled comedy The Legend of Georgia McBride (Sept. 6-25), in which an Elvis impersonator ends up in a B-level drag show.
Familiar Melodies
Musicals affect us because their storytelling employs melodies that lodge in our memories. At least five shows this fall will have audiences humming on the way home. A tour of Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music (Sept. 27-Oct. 9) lands at the Aronoff Center for the Arts, courtesy of Broadway in Cincinnati; the Aronoff also hosts a new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera (Nov. 15-27). A few other classic musicals being presented this fall include Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell (Sept. 8-Oct. 2) at the Covedale as well as university productions of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man (Oct. 20-22) at Xavier and Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban’s A Chorus Line (Oct. 20-30) at CCM.
Musicals You Don’t Know
Don’t ignore a musical you haven’t heard of. It just might tell a story in an unexpected way. I especially look forward to [title of show] (Sept. 29-Oct. 16) at the Incline Theater, a clever musical about the struggles involved in creating a musical. Falcon Theater is presenting Toxic Avenger (Sept. 30-Oct. 15), based on the 1984 cult film about a superhero transformed by radioactive waste. And there’s always room for something totally new: Know Theatre has commissioned The Darkest Night at the Gnarly Stump and will be staging its world premiere Nov. 26-Dec. 17. The Appalachian ghost-story musical by writers Lauren Hynek and Elizabeth Martin features music and lyrics by Paul Strickland, the multi-faceted Fringe performer, musician and storyteller whose Andy’s House of [blank] premiered last fall at Know.
Regardless of your taste, Cincinnati theaters have a lot to offer this fall. Take your pick, call a box office and expand your horizons. ©
This article appears in Aug 24-31, 2016.
