Sarah Ruhl, Regina Taylor, Mary Zimmerman, et al. Set for Goodman’s 2010-2011 Season

The Goodman Theatre has announced the initial five-play line-up for its 2010-2011 season, with three plays still to be determined.

The season will kick off in September with a revival of the Leonard Bernstein musical Candide, freely adapted from Voltaire and original book writer Hugh Wheeler by Tony Award winner Mary Zimmerman, who directs. The piece features lyrics by Richard Wilbur, with additional lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, John Latouche, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and Bernstein.

That production will be followed by Robert Falls’ staging of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull in October/November. Director-playwright-actor Regina Taylor will present the world premiere of her latest, Rain, in January/February 2011. The play follows journalist Iris, whose life begins to unravel when her marriage fails and she returns to her mother’s house in Texas where long-buried family secrets come to light.

Thomas Bradshaw’s world premiere of Mary will follow in February/March, directed by May Adrales. This comic absurdist drama is set in 1983, when college student David invites his boyfriend home to his parents’ house in Virginia where nothing has changed since the 1800s — including the slave quarters.

The season will also include a Goodman Theatre-commissioned world premiere by Sarah Ruhl, Stage Kiss, in March/April. The new comedy follows two ex-lovers who are thrown together as romantic leads in an outrageously dreadful melodrama, and quickly lose touch with reality as the story onstage begins to follow them offstage.

For more information, visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org.