Boston Metro Spotlight: May 2008

There are stirrings in the outback — intimations of summer stock to come. Meanwhile, Boston is closing out its season not just with a bang, but a bunch of them.

The Huntington is favoring light fare this month, with the one-man show Ennio! at the Calderwood Pavilion within the Boston Center for the Arts (Mary 13-June 1). Italian comedian and quick-change artist Ennio Marchetto stars as a rapidly morphing, origami-inspired gallery of celebrities: fifty in all, from the Mona Lisa to Eminem. On the Huntington mainstage, departing artistic director Nicholas Martin helms the Joe Masteroff-Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick 1963 musical She Loves Me (May 16-June 15), which will double as his inaugural production when he takes over the Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer (June 28-July 13). Broadway’s Kate Baldwin and Troy Britton Johnson play the penpal inamorati, who unknowingly work side by side. Martin will be receiving a prize for Sustained Excellence at the 26th annual Elliot Norton Awards, to be presented at Harvard’s Sanders Theater (May 12).

At the American Repertory Theatre, Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt and collagist playwright Charles Mee will try to reconstruct Shakespeare’s Cardenio (May 10-June 1), the script to which was lost soon after the play premiered. Set in an Umbrian villa, this summery romantic comedy promises intrigue and passion.

Speakeasy Stage — a resident company at the Calderwood — gets first crack at Alan Bennett’s The History Boys (May 2-June 7), under Scott Edmiston’s direction. Two Trinity Rep veterans — Bob Colonna and Tim Crowe — are on loan as the diametrically opposed pedagogues; local favorite Paula Plum plays drily factual Mrs. Lintott.

Elsewhere within the BCA, 11:11 Theatre Company premieres Jennifer Dubois’s Syllabus of Errors (May 2-4), about an academic family turned inside out when a relative dies in prison under questionable circumstances. On May 11, the Calderwood turns into a cauldron of new work, when the annual Boston Theatre Marathon — which benefits the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund — mounts fifty plays in the course of ten hours. For those curious about the direction of Boston theatre, it’s a glued-to-your-seat experience. Also at the BCA this month is Way Theatre’s revival of Shelagh Stephenson’s drama The Memory of Water (May 16-31).

The Lyric Stage takes up Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (May 9-June 7), and the Actors Shakespeare Project tackles King John (May 15-June 8), with Michael Forden Walker as the titular conniver. Intermezzo, known for adventurous chamber opera, has commissioned A Last Goodbye (May 16-17), the story of a college romance rekindled in midlife, with libretto by Michael Ouellette and score by MIT composer Charles Shadle; paired on the program is the Boston stage premiere of Erik Satie’s “drame symphonique” Socrate.

Tours are winding down, but David Copperfield materializes at the Opera House (May 9-11) and the Mark Morris Dance Group brings Dido and Aeneas to the Cutler Majestic Theatre (May 28-June 1), as part of the Celebrity Series of Boston.

The suburbs are humming, between Falsettos at Worcester’s Foothills Theatre (May 10-June 1) and the regional premiere of The Producers — kicking off a Stusan Stroman tribute season — at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly (May 13-June 1), with Broadway vets Scott Davidson, Jim Stanek, and Amy Bodnar assuming the leads. The Stoneham Theatre premieres local playwright Jack Neary’s The Porch (May 15-June 1), a “homespun comedy” about a social circle of 70-somethings on the North Shore; the cast includes Ellen Colton, Cheryl McMahon, and Richard Snee.

The Cape Cod summer season has officially arrived, now that Varla Jean Merman Is Anatomically Incorrect — Jeffery Roberson’s revue, fresh from the Sydney Opera House — is camped out at the Provincetown Art House Theatre for a good long stay (weekends, May 24-August 31). Wellfleet Harbor Actors’ Theater presents Lynn Nottage’s award winning play,
Intimate Apparel (May 21-June 14), about an African-American seamstress in 1905 Manhattan, who earns a living creating exquisite custom lingerie for women of the boudoir and the brothel alike.

Maine’s Ogunquit Playhouse is revving up, too, with a visit from Forbidden Broadway (May 23-25) and Fiddler on the Roof starring Sally Struthers and Eddie Mekka (May 28-June 1). In Rhode Island, Pawtucket’s Gamm Theatre offers The Taming of the Shrew (May 15-June 15), with Tony Estrella and Jeanine Kane playing tamer and tamee.

In the Berkshires, Shakespeare & Company departs from the Bard to present The Ladies Man (May 28-August 31), Charles Morey’s free-hand adaptation of the Feydeau farce Tailleur pour dames. Having gone year-round, Barrington Stage Company is already in gear for Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife (May 21-June 8), a solo tour de force to be performed by Vince Gatton (a 2006 Drama Desk nominee for Candy and Dorothy). BSC is also planning a staged reading of WATT!?! (May 24-25), a rock musical about Reagan-era Secretary of the Interior James Watt, of all people. David Javerbaum (The Daily Show, Cry-Baby) contributed the text, Brendan Milburn of GrooveLily the tunes. The Berkshire Theatre Festival springs back to life — 80 years young! — with The Caretaker by Harold Pinter (May 22-June 28).