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Guys and Dolls
A Musical Fable of Broadway, Based on a Story and Characters of Damon Runyan, Music and Lyrics by Frank Loesser, Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows; Directed by Chris Coleman
September 23 – October 26, 2008, Main Stage
Based on the popular stories by Damon Runyon, Guys and Dolls is highly regarded as a quintessentially American musical. Its basic plot revolves around the romantic clash between Sky Masterson, a high-rolling gambler willing to bet on virtually anything, and Miss Sarah Brown, a straight-walking sergeant at the Save-a-Soul Mission. With such memorable characters as Nathan Detroit, Miss Adelaide and Nicely-Nicely Johnson and such popular musical numbers as “Luck Be a Lady” and “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” Guys and Dolls has been revived countless times since its Broadway debut in 1950.
R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY [and Mystery] OF THE UNIVERSE
Written and Directed by D.W. Jacobs, from the life, work and writings of R. Buckminster Fuller
October 14 – December 7, 2008, Studio
An engineer, architect, mathematician, designer, poet, philosopher, motivational speaker, major utopian thinker and inventor of the geodesic dome, Buckminster Fuller was one of the most remarkable minds of the 20th century. Born in 1895, Bucky was way ahead of his time. Refusing to think in conventional ways, he was an innovator, a futurist, and one of the first true global thinkers. This tour-de-force, one-man performance explores Bucky’s life and work through a blend of testimony, lecture, autobiography, poetry, comic antics and video imagery. The play spirals and spins through ideas and experiences as Bucky escorts you on an unforgettable journey.
A Christmas Carol
Adapted by Mead Hunter from the novel by Charles Dickens; Directed by Cliff Fannin Baker
December 2 – 28, 2008, Main Stage
We reprise this popular holiday favorite for its second year, with Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, a sleigh full of ghosts and, of course, Scrooge himself, back to regale you with their holiday fable of forgiveness and redemption. And, we’ll be adding a few more bells and whistles, just to keep our audiences guessing.
World Premiere
Apollo
Written and Directed by Nancy Keystone
January 13 – February 8, 2009, Main Stage
Years in the making, Apollo is an epic, multimedia examination of post-WWII America as it explores the birth of the U.S. space program, its employment of former Nazi rocket scientists, and their surprising intersection with the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s. Using the U.S. mission to the moon as a symbol of our country’s greatness, Apollo probes deep into the core conundrum of what we believe we are as a nation. Through a thrilling variety of theatrical modes, Keystone has created a kaleidoscopic universe to reveal the moral costs of human aspiration and progress. This production will be a major event for Portland and for Portland Center Stage, garnering attention from around the country.
American Premiere
How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found
By Fin Kennedy; Directed by Rose Riordan
January 27 – March 22, 2009, Studio
When a young advertising executive reaches the breaking point and decides to drop out of his life, he pays a visit to a master of the craft – a shoestring relation posing as a seafront fortune teller in a seedy corner of the country. Haunted by strange visitations, the drop-out begins a nightmarish journey to the edge of existence, disposing of everything that made him who he was. Wryly funny and sometimes harrowing, this extraordinary new play follows one man’s desperate attempts to buck the system, and asks what really makes us who we are in the 21st century.
The Importance of Being Earnest
By Oscar Wilde; Directed by Chris Coleman
February 24 – March 22, 2009, Main Stage
Subtitled “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People,” The Importance of Being Earnest is Wilde’s most sparkling comedy of manners. The dizzying plot centers around Algernon Moncrieff, an upper-class English bachelor, who is visited by his friend Jack Worthing, who likes to be known as “Ernest” when he comes to London from his home in the country. Jack has come to town to propose to Gwendolen Fairfax, the daughter of the imposing Lady Bracknell, but he encounters two rather insurmountable problems. First, Gwendolen is only willing to consent to marriage because his name is Ernest, a name that “seems to inspire absolute confidence,” but which, of course, is not Jack’s true Christian name. Second, Lady Bracknell objects to Jack as a suitor when she learns that as an infant, he was abandoned by his parents and found in a handbag in Victoria Station. Meanwhile, Algernon pays a visit to Jack’s ward, Cecily, pretending to be Jack’s wayward brother, Ernest. This meets with Cecily’s approval because in her diary she has been writing about her engagement to a man named Ernest. Then things get really interesting.
World Premiere
Crazy Enough
Written and Performed by Storm Large; Directed by Chris Coleman
March 31 – June 7, 2009, Studio
What do you do when you’re told you are going to lose your mind? That by the time you are in your twenties, you will start hearing voices and slip into insanity? What do you do when this prediction comes from the psychiatrist who’s been treating your troubled and suicidal mother your entire life? Oh, and you’re nine years old. For Storm Large, this was the starting gun, the cruel shove that sent her sprinting into life, doing anything and everything to avoid the impending madness, or at least to have one hell of a life before her mind was gone. Crazy Enough is an exploration through stories and song of how a girl can live, nearly die and live again by praying to the holy trinity: Sex, Drugs and Rock’n Roll.
Frost/Nixon
By Peter Morgan; Directed by Rose Riordan
April 14 – May 10, 2009, Main Stage
Frost/Nixon centers around a series of televised interviews former president Richard Nixon granted British journalist David Frost in 1977 that ended with a tacit admission of guilt regarding his role in the Watergate scandal. The play premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in London in August 2006 and opened on Broadway the following year, bringing instant acclaim for the playwright, Peter Morgan, who is also a noted screenwriter, whose recent credits include The Queen and The Last King of Scotland. The New York production also garnered many important awards, including a Tony Award for Frank Langella for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for his portrayal of Richard Nixon. The New York Times described the play as “proceed[ing] with the momentum of a ticking-bomb thriller and the zing of a boulevard comedy… Structured as a prize fight between two starkly ambitious men in professional crisis, Frost/Nixon makes it clear that the competitor who controls the camera reaps the spoils.”
Grey Gardens
Book by Doug Wright, Music by Scott Frankel, and Lyrics by Michael Korie; Director TBA
May 26 – June 21, 2009, Main Stage
Fresh from Broadway where it was nominated for ten Tony Awards in 2007, this new musical from Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife) tells the hilarious and heartbreaking story of two indomitable women, Edith Bouvier Beale and her adult daughter “Little Edie,” the eccentric aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Once among the brightest names on the social register, these two women became East Hampton’s most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion. From the grandeur of 1940s high society to the sensational tabloid headlines that rocked the Kennedy clan in 1973, Grey Gardens is a witty and unforgettable journey to the other side of Camelot.
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