Boston Metro Spotlight: January 2008

True theater fans can get a bit impatient with the holiday season, with all that frothy special-interest fare and little of substance to tide one over. Fortunately, January brings a slew of meatier material. Scott Zigler directs the American Repertory Theatre’s revival of Michael Frayn’s 1998 drama Copenhagen (January 3-February 3), starring company stalwarts Will LeBow and Karen MacDonald, plus local legend John Kuntz in his long-overdue ART debut.

The Huntington Theatre ups the ante with Third (January 4- February 3), Wendy Wasserstein’s final play, about a liberal college professor (played by Tony Award nominee Maureen Anderman) who butts heads professionally with a conservative prepster (Graham Hamilton) and personally with her teenaged daughter (Halley Feiffer).

Emboldened by the warm reception given last season’s Miss Witherspoon, the Lyric Stage is mounting the New England premiere of Christopher Durang’s mock-noir musical Adrift in Macao (January 4-February 12). Both the playwright and composer Peter Melnick — the grandson of Richard Rodgers — will be on hand January 19 to discuss their creative process.

At the Calderwood Pavilion within the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston Theatre Works revives Tony Kushner’s 1990 masterwork Angels in America (January 18-February 16), while Speakeasy Stage introduces Boston audiences to The Little Dog Laughed, Douglas Carter Beane’s hilarious Broadway hit about a closeted matinee idol played by Robert Serrel; Maureen Keiller portrays his rapacious agent, Jonathan Orsini the dial-a-date who threatens his cover (January 18-February 16). Interspersed amid dark nights for Dog will be Rebekah Maggor’s one-woman extravaganza Shakespeare’s Actresses in America (January 27 -February 11). Speaking of the Bard, the ever-peripatetic Actors Shakespeare Project resurfaces in Harvard Square in a five-character take on Henry V, directed by Shakespeare & Company’s Normi Noel.

Back at the BCA’s black boxes, the Gurnet Theatre Project revives Kenneth Lonergan’s coming-of-age drama This Is Our Youth (January 10-19); Zeitgeist Stage Company serves up British playwright Matthew Todd’s Blowing Whistles, about a gay couple who celebrate their tenth anniversary with a discombobulating Internet hook-up (January 18-February 9); and the Our Place Theatre Project presents the 2008 African American Theatre Festival (January 24-February 9) featuring Charles Fuller’s Zooman and the Sign, about the repercussions of a drive-by shooting; Celeste Bedford Walker’s Camp Logan, about the tragically sidelined all-black 24th Infantry of World War I; and Feathers on My Arms, a tribute to Zora Neale Hurston by OPTP artistic director Jacqui Parker.

The big touring shows this month are the perennial favorite Rent at the Citi Performing Arts Center Wang Theatre (January 8-13); Monty Python’s Spamalot at the Opera House (January 15-27); and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Whistle Down the Wind at the Wang (January 29 – February 3) — lacking, alas, local Webber protegee Andrea Ross, who dropped out to go back to school. Menopause the Musical (Stuart Street Playhouse, beginning January 31) isn’t so much a tour as a national franchise; Kathy St. George and Mary Callanan resume their roles as fading soap star and superannuated hippie.

On the fringe front, the Piti Theatre Company brings Riding the Wave.com — founder Jonathan Mirin’s autobiographical account of a stock tip-fueled spiritual journey — to the Boston Playwrights Theatre (January 11-20).

Out in the suburbs, Merrimack Rep presents the international phenomenon 2 Pianos, 4 Hands, directed by co-author Richard Greenblatt (January 4-27). Stoneham Theatre offers the U.S. premiere of Antoine Feval (January 10-27), Canadian comedian Chris Gibb’s farce about a sleuth’s sidekick who discovers that his mentor is a crook. The Wellesley Summer Theatre explores the lives of four generations of Irish women in Marina Carr’s The Mai (January 10-February 3), and Worcester’s Foothills Theatre sets toes tapping with Sisters of Swing: The Story of the Andrews Sisters (January 12- February 3), featuring strong local songstress Bridget Beirne as Maxine.

Watertown’s New Rep proffers Constance Congdon’s new translation of the Moliere classic The Misanthrope (January 15-February 10) and, in its black box, A Pinter Duet: The Lover and Ashes to Ashes, with Rachel Harker and Stephen Russell (January 19-February 10).

Rhode Island warrants an excursion (or three) for Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman at the Gamm Theatre (January 24-February 24); Shakespeare’s powerful Richard III at Trinity Rep (January 25-March 2); and Lydia R. Diamond’s adaptation of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye at the Providence Black Repertory Theatre (January 31-March 9).