One of my favorite moments in the theater year is that time in late spring when local venues announce their seasons to come. I like looking over these schedules for a few different items: for revivals of old favorites (e.g. this season's The Crucible at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center); for contemporary successes from Off-Broadway and Broadway (this season's The Laramie Project at Stageworks and Art at TBPAC); and for entirely unknown plays that just might happily surprise me (as Mac Wellman's Sincerity Forever did a few weeks ago in an Alley Cat Players production).
Of course, nothing on a theater's schedule can tell you what quality of production to expect (who could have guessed that Gorilla's Glass Menagerie would be so tepid?). But every year brings a few delightful or even thrilling experiences, and I'm hooked on the sport of guessing which these might be. So, before you make your wager:
American Stage has announced that its theme for 2002-03 is "Become": a celebration of "humanity's compulsion to evolve — our interminable urge to change, improve, convert, and develop." Now, this sounds more than a little hokey to me — after all, there's hardly a play in the repertory, from Aeschylus to Ayckbourn, that isn't about human change in some fashion.
But enough carping. Let's see the shape of things to come. First there's David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning Proof (Sept. 20-Oct. 13), about a young woman's striving for her full intellectual inheritance. It's an interesting play, not very eye opening, but solid, serious work. Next is Joe DiPietro's Over the River and Through the Woods (Nov. 1-24). I saw this show last year at Sarasota's Florida Studio Theater and found it divided within itself, unsure as to whether it was a superficial comedy about generational misunderstanding or a serious work about family obligations. I'm guessing that these problems are too inherent in the script to be solved by a director.
Next (Jan. 31-March 2) is Oscar Wilde's classic The Importance of Being Earnest: If fake British accents don't sink it, this could be a gem. Then (May 23-June 15) comes local writer/director Bob Devin Jones' Parallel Lives. It's about race relations in the 1950s and 60s, and is based on essays by St. Petersburg Times columnist Bill Maxwell and novelist Beverly Coyle. This one sounds promising — if it's anywhere good as Jones' Uncle Bends a few months ago, it's worth waiting for. And finally (July 11-Aug. 3) there's David Ives' Mere Mortals and Other Plays. Ives specializes in clever, intellectual comic sketches which, when done well, are simply delicious. But they can also appear thin; in this case particularly, directing is everything.
Gorilla Theatre in Tampa also announced its season recently. It's in some ways disappointing. First of all, Gorilla's admirable tendency to showcase serious Off-Broadway material — The Designated Mourner, Snakebit, Side Man — isn't much in evidence here. Only one of the Gorilla shows — Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things — is of that quality, and that's a co-production with Stageworks. Three of the other five mainstage shows are by Gorilla co-founders Aubrey Hampton and Susan Hussey, suggesting that Gorilla may be reverting to its early, not-so-interesting mission of producing its own producers' work.
But let's look at it in order. The first show of the season (Sept. 5-22) is Hampton's Bach Among the Flowers, about Dr. Edward Bach, a British physician who, in the early 20th century turned away from conventional medicines in favor of the healing power of plants. His Bach Flower Remedies are still sold in pharmacies throughout Europe. Next (Oct. 10-27) is LaBute's The Shape of Things. This is a dark comedy about a young student who drifts into a relationship with an art major while his best friend's engagement crumbles. LaBute may be one of the few contemporary artists to figure importantly in both theater and film; the buzz on this show suggests that it'll be worth seeing.
After LaBute, it's back to Aubrey Hampton and The Flight of the Little Sparrow, a musical biography of the great Edith Piaf, who rose from abject poverty to become possibly the most popular French performer ever. Judy London will star as Piaf and Andrei Cheine will accompany on accordion and piano. If the singer can handle it, this could be terrific. Then comes Tru (Feb. 6-23), a much-produced one-man show about author Truman Capote. This one's received a lot of good press.
Another Stageworks co-production follows (March 27-April 13): Ray Zacek's Desperados is about the denizens of an Arizona desert motel, and mixes reality with fantasy. After Desperados comes Rat World (May 15-June 1) by Gorilla co-producer Susan Hussey. It's about three people who work at an amusement park that's going out of business. The season ends (June 26-29) with Gorilla's Young Dramatists Festival, for teenage writers 14-18.
And finally there's Jobsite Theater's fifth season, all of which will take place at the Shimberg Playhouse of TBPAC. In brief, Jobsite's season looks to be its best ever. In fact, the only show that worries me is its first, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (Oct. 17- Nov. 3). This is a play so incessantly, so crudely gory that T.S. Eliot called it "one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written, a play in which it is incredible that Shakespeare had any hand at all." Can Jobsite redeem it? Expect a revelation — or a mess.
The next three shows look like winners, though. The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) (January 3-19) is by the same writers who concocted the wonderfully silly Complete Work of William Shakespeare (abridged), produced a while ago also by Jobsite. The Beauty Queen of Leenane (March 27-April 13) is the much-acclaimed companion play to Martin McDonagh's brilliant The Cripple of Inishmaan, which was produced stunningly by Stageworks in 2000. And Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine (June 13-29) is already a contemporary classic on the subjects of gender, history and emotional bliss.
Jobsite's season ends with Original Works 2003: Murder Ballads (Aug. 1-17), a series of performance pieces based on the 10 tracks of an album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
All right: Those are the horses and those are the odds. Next stop, the box office.
Where you'll lay your money down.
Contact Mark E. Leib at mark.leib@ weeklyplanet.com or call 813-248-8888, ext. 305.
This article appears in Jun 12-18, 2002.
