Boston Metro Spotlight: October 2009

Shakespeare & Company founder and theater legend Tina Packer plays Martha to Nigel Gore’s George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatre (October 1-24), to be followed by Company’s One’s regional premiere of J.T. Rogers’ The Overwhelming, set in 1994 Rwanda (October 30-November 21). In the BCA’s Black Box Theatre, Zeitgeist Stage Company introduces area audiences to Craig Wright’s chummy political drama, Lady (October 30-November 21).

Broadway/pop star Maureen McGovern sweeps into the BCA’s Calderwood Pavilion –under the Huntington Theatre’s aegis — for a “musical memoir,” A Long and Winding Road (October 9-November 15). She’ll cede the stage to Joey Arias and Sherry Vine in SINsation October 29-31, as part of the Theater Offensive’s Out on the Edge 2009 festival (October 25-November 15), spanning forty events at five venues.

Ronan Noone has a new play debuting at BU’s Boston Playwrights’ Theatre: Little Black Dress, starring Jeremiah Kissel and Marianna Bassham (October 1-24). The jukebox musical Girls Night takes over Club Café (October 13-November 22). Lyric Stage smartly nabbed regional rights to Sarah Ruhl’s quirky dramedy, Dead Man’s Cell Phone (October 16-November 14). Aficionados of Ryan Landry’s Gold Dust Orphans will look forward to his latest spoof, Valet of the Dolls, at the gay club Machine (October 23-November 29). Wheelock Family Theatre thrills the eleven-and-up crowd with Dwayne Hartford’s adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities (October 30-November 29). Dance performances include Stomp at the Cutler Majestic (October 1-18) — raucous street theatre turned world-touring phenomenon — and Boston Ballet’s revival of Maina Gielgud’s delicate Giselle at the Boston Opera House (October 1-11).

Student performances are rarely all that compelling (except perhaps to parents), but the fact that innovative director David Gammons is helming the American Repertory Theater’s class of 2010 in The Winter’s Tale (October 1-3) makes it a must-see. ART will be offering novel twists on Shakespeare all season. Sleep No More, an immersive gloss on Macbeth by the British troupe Punchdrunk, invades the Old Lincoln School in Brookline Village (October 8-January 3). Meanwhile, ART’s “Club Oberon” in Cambridge hosts — in addition to The Donkey Show — a cabaret series encompassing 47 Ways to Die, based on Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies (October 8); the Steamy Bohemians’ Jerkus Circus vaudeville show (October 9), and the gender-bending company All the Kings Men (October 11).

Local fave John Kuntz stars in the Nora Theatre’s revival of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker at the Central Square Theater (October 1-November 1). They’ll be sharing the space with cabarettist Belle Linda Halpern in Cravings: Songs of Hunger & Satisfaction (October 8-25). The Actors Shakespeare Project descends into Downstairs at The Garage for The Taming of the Shrew, featuring company founder Benjamin Evett and Sarah Newhouse as tamer and tamee (October 14-November 8).

Lowell’s Merrimack Repertory Theatre has assembled an impressive cast for Conor McPherson’s 2008 Broadway hit The Seafarer (October 15-November 8): David Adkins, Allyn Burrows, Jim Frangione, Gordon Joseph Weiss, and Mark Zeisler. On its mainstage, Watertown’s New Rep revives David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow with Aimee Doherty, Gabriel Kuttner, and Robert Pemberton (October 18-November 7); in the Downstage space, Adrianne Krstansky performs Lisa Kron’s one-woman show 2.5 Minute Ride (October 4-24). Stoneham Theatre imports a well-received teen musical from Chicago, Nathan Allen’s The Sparrow (October 22-November 8), and Chelsea’s Apollinaire Theatre a 2004 Edinburgh hit, Anthony Neilson’s The Wonderful World of Dissocia (October 30-November 29). Charlestown’s Theatre on Fire cracks open the Neil LaBute trilogy Bash (October 2-17).

The perennial toast of Provincetown (indeed, the world), Lea DeLaria plays a washed-up ’80s rock star in Counter Productions’ workshop presentation of a new musical, Insatiable Hunger — with book by Meryl Cohn, music and lyrics by Billy Hough and Susan Goldberg — at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre on Cape Cod (October 8-23). Meanwhile, in the Berkshires, Barrington Stage Company tackles The Fantasticks, with Broadway’s Steve Wilson as El Gallo (October 7-18).

In Rhode Island, Trinity Rep offers Steven Dietz’s Shooting Star, a romcom about youthful love reclaimed in maturity; real-life couple — and Trinity vets — Kurt Rhoads and Nance Williamson star (October 16-November 22). Pawtucket’s Gamm Theatre folds into its repertory the first and last word on adolescent attachment: Romeo and Juliet (October 22-November 15).