Barrington Stage Company Plans Exciting 15th Anniversary
Carousel, Sleuth, Streetcar on Mainstage, World Premiere on Stage 2
By: Larry Murray - Jan 16, 2009
Today, with the key members of her team on either side of her, Julianne Boyd, artistic director of Barrington Stage Company announced plans for the coming season. On the Main Stage, the classic Rogers and Hammerstein musical Carousel will be presented from June 17 through July 11, followed by the Tony-award winning play Sleuth by Anthony Shaffer July 16 through August 1 and ending the summer with Tennessee Williams' landmark play A Streetcar Named Desire August 6 through 29.
The BSC Musical Theatre Lab under the direction of Tony award-wining composer William Finn will kick off his fourth season May 23 and 24 with a staged reading of a new musical in development Poolside at the Hotel Bel Air by Janet Allard and Nikos Tsakalakos. The MTL will also feature a production of I'll Be Damned, a new musical by Rob Broadhurst and Brent Black, running from August 13 through August 29. Back for its 4th Edition is the wildly popular Songs by Ridiculously Talented Composers and Lyricists You Probably Don't Know But Should, hosted by William Finn for three performances on Labor Day weekend – September 4-6.
Costs cut, not quality
Boyd acknowledged that budgets had to been pared, costs contained, and the current economic reality confronted. "Due to the uncertain financial times, 2009 will be a new adventure for all of us in the non-profits," she acknowledged, "But I believe we can be as prudent as possible and still present exciting theatre."
"What cuts we have made are behind the scenes, what the public will see on stage will not be affected," she promised. She also acknowledged that the company's capital campaign continues, and that the $1.4 million to be raised in 2009 to complete the successful $8.5 million capital campaign is very much alive. Board President Mary Ann Quinson said the goal while daunting, was exciting. Richard Parison, Producing Director commented that the company's base of support was very strong not only in Pittsfield, but beyond.
Details of the BSC Mainstage Season - Carousel
Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, chosen "Best Musical of the Twentieth Century" by Time Magazine, will open BSC's 15th Anniversary season from June 17 to July 11, 2009 (Press Opening, Sunday, June 21 at 5pm). Directed by BSC's Artistic Director Julianne Boyd, Carousel reunites her with choreographer Joshua Bergasse and musical director Darren R. Cohen. This same creative team helmed the theatre's sold-out production of West Side Story in 2007.

Adapted from Ferenc Molnar's Liliom, Carousel tells the bittersweet love story between the carnival barker roustabout Billy Bigelow and the naïve mill worker Julie Jordan. The glorious score includes June is Bustin' Out All Over, If I Loved You and You'll Never Walk Alone. Richard Rodgers wrote in his autobiography, "Oscar never wrote more moving lyrics and to me, my score is more satisfying than anything I have ever written."

After long and distinguished careers with other collaborators, Richard Rodgers (composer, 1902-1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (librettist/lyricist, 1895-1960) joined forces in 1943 to create the most successful partnership in the American musical theatre.
15th Anniversary Gala Slated for June 27
BSC will celebrate its 15th Anniversary with its Annual Summer Gala, to be held on Saturday, June 27, 2009, featuring a performance of Rodgers' & Hammerstein's Carousel followed by a party with dinner and dancing. BSC's Board of Directors (Mary Ann Quinson, President) have announced that this year's Gala will honor founding Artistic Director Julianne Boyd.


Sleuth
Anthony Shaffer's Tony Award-winning Sleuth will play on the Mainsatge July 16, August 1 and is a fiendishly clever comedy thriller set in an English country house owned by a famous mystery writer and ingenious gamester. When a young man, who is the wife's lover, arrives for drinks, the two men play a wily cat and mouse game of bluff and double bluff. Suspense reigns supreme in Sleuth, which is perhaps best known for its long, successful Broadway run and the film version which starred Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. Shaffer said the play was partially inspired by one of his friends, composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim, whose intense interest in games is mirrored by one of the play's characters. 


A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams' explosive, sexually charged drama, A Streetcar Named Desire, will play on the Mainstage from August 6 - 29, 2009 (Press Opening Sunday, August 9 at 5pm). Considered by many to be Williams' greatest play, Streetcar opened on Broadway in December 1947 and won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. 


The story centers around the emotionally fragile Blanche DuBois and her arrival in New Orleans to stay with her sister Stella. She is confronted by Stella's brutish, working class husband Stanley Kowalski. A psychological and sexual showdown ensues, interrupting the delicate balance in Stella and Stanley's marriage and sending Blanche's life out of control. Julianne Boyd will direct. 


A Streetcar Named Desire, originally starred Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden. Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times, "Out of poetic imagination and ordinary compassion, he has spun a poignant and luminous story." He went on to call the play "the most imaginative and perceptive play (Williams) has written." A Streetcar Named Desire was made into a film in 1951, earning Academy Awards for Vivien Leigh, Malden and Hunter, in addition to 8 nominations.


One of the greatest playwrights in American drama, Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), is best known for such noted classics as The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Rose Tattoo, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Night of the Iguana, and Suddenly Last Summer.
BSC Musical Theatre Lab - Two New Works
BSC's acclaimed Musical Theatre Lab will kick off with a staged reading of Poolside at the Hotel Bel Air by Janet Allard and Nikos Tsakalakos on May 23 and 24. 

Poolside at the Hotel Bel Air tells the story of a pool boy's summer and how it is turned upside down when he's seduced by LA glitz and glam and a sexy older woman. Love and chaos ensue in a rocking new musical about a pool boy's hopes and dreams.
Janet Allard is a Fulbright Fellow, holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama and has attended the NYU Musical Theatre Writing Program as a bookwriter/lyricist. Her work has been seen at The Guthrie Lab, The Kennedy Center, Mixed Blood, Playwrights Horizons, Yale Rep, The Yale Cabaret, NYMF, Joe's Pub, and with P73. 
Nikos Tsakalakos is a singer-songwriter from New Brunswick, New Jersey. In the summer of '07, he inaugurated the late night cabaret series at Barrington Stage Company. Several of his songs were featured in an evening hosted by William Finn at Joe's Pub in New York. He recently graduated with an MFA from the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He also worked poolside at the Hotel Bel-Air.
I'll Be Damned will run from August 13 through 29 (press opening Sunday, August 20 at 7:30pm). Written by Rob Broadhurst and Brent Black, I'll Be Damned is an original musical that centers on a 19-year-old home-schooled comic book dork named Louis Foster who sells his soul to Satan in exchange for a friend. 

Rob Broadhurst (Composer, Co-librettist) and Brent Black (Lyricist and Co-librettist) recently graduated form NYU's Tisch's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program where they took a master class with William Finn. 

"The musical writers we're presenting this year are extraordinary, inventive and always surprising. I am pleased to introduce these new voices, first to Pittsfield and then to the world," said William Finn. 

Back for its 4th Edition is the wildly popular Songs by Ridiculously Talented Composers and Lyricists You Probably Don't Know, But Should, hosted by William Finn for three performances on Labor Day weekend.
DETAILS OF BSC Stage 2 - Freud's Last Session
Presented last summer as a staged reading, Mark St. Germain's Freud's Last Session will receive it world premiere from June 10 -28. After escaping the Nazis in Vienna, legendary psychiatrist Dr. Sigmund Freud invites a young, little known professor, C.S. Lewis to his home in London. Lewis expects to be called on the carpet for satirizing Freud in a recent book, but the dying Freud has a much more significant agenda.
On the day England entered World War Two, Freud and Lewis clash on the existence of God, love, sex and the meaning of life – only two weeks before Freud chose to take his own. Inspired by Dr. Armand M. Nicolai Jr.'s book "The Question of God," Freud's Last Session is a provocative and moving confrontation between two giants in their quest to discover the truth about each other and themselves.

BSC has had a long-standing relationship with playwright Mark St. Germain – whose plays Ears on A Beatle, The God Committee and The Collyer Brothers at Home, played on the Mainstage and Stage 2, the first two having premiered at BSC.
Underneath the Lintel
One of the most popular Off-Broadway plays from the last decade, Glen Berger's Underneath the Lintel (July 8 - 26,) is the tale of a Dutch librarian who, upon finding a 113-year overdue book, goes on a search to find the culprit, and winds up on a life-changing quest. One clue builds upon another as this once-staid librarian embarks on a journey that spans the globe – the result of which carries mystical and spiritual implications.

"All my plays are first inspired by music, and Underneath the Lintel was inspired particularly by certain Klezmer/Yiddish music from the 1920s (and earlier)" says playwright Glen Berger in the play's Afterword.
"The 'jaunty melancholy,' the 'dancing-despite-it-all' quality it contained, the defiance even, a certain 'finding-joy-despite-all-the-evidence-to-the-contrary' quality in the music compelled me to try to express it as a play." 

Long-time BSC director Andrew Volkoff will direct. Volkoff is the former Associate Artistic Director of Barrington Stage Company and member of First Look Theatre Company. For Barrington Stage, Volkoff directed I am My Own Wife, Fully Committed, Santa Land Diaries, Thief River, The Shape of Things, and Love and Happiness.
Underneath the Lintel originally opened in New York in September 2001 and has been described by The Los Angeles Times as "A satisfying mix of intelligent writing and quirky humor" and by Seattle Weekly as "one of a handful of great plays written in the last five yearsÂ… an astonishingly beautiful piece of writing."
BSC Youth Theatre
The East High Wildcats are back in an all-new adventure as Barrington Stage Company's Youth Theatre presents the Berkshire premiere of Disney's High School Musical 2, with book by David Simpatico, Songs by Various Composers, Music Adapted, Arranged and Producedby Bryan Louiselle. Performances run from July 15 through August 16, at the First Congregational Church, 27 East Street, Pittsfield. Auditions for local youth ages 13-19 will be held in March.
Barrington Stage continues its affordable theatre initiative in 2009.
To that end, 

BSC will once again offer the popular Pay What You Can Performances for each Mainstage and Stage 2 show. Low priced previews continue at $15 and $20 for the first 2 performances on the Mainstage and $15 for Stage 2. For the Mainstage, $35 tickets will also continue for Senior matinees orchestra tickets (a $42 value) and Wednesday, community night (a $48 value), for all Berkshire County, Litchfield and Columbia County residents.
To celebrate their 15th Anniversary, at every Mainstage and Stage 2 performance BSC will offer fifteen tickets at just $15 each. This will be available to anyone. Tickets can be purchased ahead of time, in person, on the phone or online. There will also be a $15 ticket for youth 21 years and younger (previously youth 13 and younger got in free and youth 14 and older paid ½ price, up to $28) for all performances except Saturday evening. 

Tickets for the general public, priced from $15-$56, go on sale March 1. Flex Pass subscriptions are currently available for the summer 2009 Mainstage season – with no handling fees through February 27. Groups of 15 should contact Monica Bliss at 413 499-5446, x200 for other special rates. Information on shows, Flex Passes and tickets is available at 413-236-8888.
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