Recent off-Broadway hits come to alternative local stages
By Ed Siegel, Globe Staff, 09/12/99
Most off-Broadway shows don't have touring companies a la "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," but some of the area's small to midsize theaters will be mounting productions of their own of recent off-Broadway hits.
Conor McPherson, one of the hot new Irish playwrights, had a great season in New York last year with "The Weir," "This Lime Tree Bower," and "St. Nicholas." The last is a one-man play about a bitter critic (some would say there is no other kind) and a pack of vampires (or as the same some would say, fellow bloodsuckers). We will not get into that today, however, partly because McPherson's play is about much more than that - power and ethics, for starters. Barrington Stage Company had an intriguing, if not fully satisfactory, production of the play during the summer and now (Thursday through Oct. 2) the Sugan Theatre, Boston's theater devoted to Irish plays at the Boston Center for the Arts, picks up the ball. Carmel O'Reilly, the head of the company, will direct talented local actor Richard McElvain in the part that Brian Cox made famous in London and New York.
Another play that made a big impact off-Broadway last season was "Killer Joe" by Tracy Letts, whom some critics compared to Quentin Tarantino in terms of the play's violently black humor. The play replaces Sam Shepard's "Eyes for Consuela" on the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater schedule, which is fitting only because director Jeff Zinn's plot summary makes Shepard's family plays look like "The Waltons" - "A failed rabbit farmer turned coke dealer hires the local cop who moonlights as a hit man to do in momma for the insurance money." It runs Sept. 22 to Oct. 10.
If they can make musicals about sinking ships and hookers on 42d Street then why not one about a brain tumor? That's what William Finn did with his "A New Brain," which SpeakEasy Stage Company brings to the BCA Oct. 7-30, directed by Paul Daigneault, the head of the company. Try to remember where you heard the author's name - Finn wrote the score and the book for "Falsettos." (SpeakEasy also has Paul Rudnick's "The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told" in June.)
Douglas Carter Beane's "As Bees in Honey Drown" won all kinds of awards last year, including the Obie, and Eric Simonson directs the story of a wannabe(e) writer for the Nora Theatre Company Oct. 22 through Nov. 7. It's at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre, which also has Katherine Snodgrass's "Observatory," about an astronomy teacher and student, Thursday through Oct. 3.
Harlem of the 1940s came alive in "The Old Settler," about a woman trying to avoid that fate (the title is a synonym for old maid) with a younger man in John Henry Redwood's play that's at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston Oct. 22 through Nov. 17, following Paul Osborn's "Morning's at Seven" Sept. 17 through Oct. 17. The same company returns to off-Broadway in March with David Hare's "The Judas Kiss."
Some of the more outrageous off-Broadway plays never make it to Boston, but le Black Cat is producing one that's so outrageous we can't tell you what it is. It's a Mark Ravenhill play about three young Brits very much into consuming and it's called something along the lines of "Shopping and [another more physical activity]." It caused a storm in London and less of one in New York, so we'll see for ourselves at the BCA Oct. 30 to Nov. 21.
Small to midsize houses don't live by off-Broadway plays alone. The Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell begins its New Century Series with Steve Martin's "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" Sept. 3 through Oct. 3 and follows with Clifford Odets's "Awake and Sing" Oct. 15 to Nov. 14 and N. Richard Nash's "The Rainmaker" Nov. 26 to Dec. 26. The New Repertory Theatre goes "Golfing With Alan Shepard," a play about four older men seeing their lives through the prism of golf, Sept. 15 through Oct. 17, before going on to the Orpheum Foxborough Oct. 22-31. Then it unites a terrific cast of local actors - including John Kuntz (also Einstein in Merrimack's "Picasso"), Jeremiah Kissel, Philip Patrone, and Diego Arciniegas in Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" Nov. 10 through Dec. 12.
The Theater Offensive's "Out on the Edge Festival of Lesbian and Gay Theater" continues through Oct. 2 at the BCA, including Holly Hughes's "Preaching to the Perverted!" Sept. 29 to Oct. 2. Eric Bogosian brings back characters from several of his shows in a one-night performance at Northeastern's Blackman Theatre Oct. 29.
How does "The Dutchman" by Amira Baraka, ne Leroi Jones, hold up? The Theatre Cooperative at the Peabody House Theatre in Somerville resurrects it Nov. 12 to Dec. 11, as does Hartford Stage Jan. 13 to Feb. 13.
