Theater News

Guthrie to Present Plays by Shakespeare, Coward, Friel, McDonagh, Wasserstein, et al.

Ian McKellen
Ian McKellen

The Guthrie Theater’s 2007-2008 season will feature 18 full productions that run the gamut from classics to the contemporary works, highlighted by a special engagement of the Royal Shakespeare Company with Sir Ian McKellen starring. Also of note are the world premiere of a new translation of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt by American poet Robert Bly, the U.S. premiere of Alan Stanford’s Jane Eyre, and a new production of Wendy Wasserstein’s final play, Third.

The Wurtele thrust stage will host Jane Eyre, directed by John Miller-Stephany (September 8-November 10). Next, under the direction of Trevor Nunn, the RSC will perform in repertory Shakespeare’s King Lear and Chekhov’s The Seagull (October 5-14); McKellen will head the cast as the RSC makes an international tour following performances of these plays in the U.K.

A Christmas Carol (November 20-December 30), adapted by Barbara Field and directed by Gary Gisselman, is up next. That production will be followed by Peer Gynt, directed by Tim Caroll (January 12-March 2); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Guthrie artistic director Joe Dowling (April 12-June 22); and The Government Inspector, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from the original by Nikolai Gogol, also directed by Dowling (July 5-August 24).

Slated to be presented on the McGuire proscenium stage are Noël Coward’s Private Lives (July 21-September 2), directed by Peter Rothstein; Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa (September 22-November 25), directed by Dowling; Third (February 16-March 30), directed by Casey Stangl; and Thomas Kilroy’s The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde (May 31-July 13), a play about the private life of Oscar Wilde and his wife, directed by Marcela Lorca.

The Dowling Studio will host the Frank Theatre production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman (September 20-October 14), directed by Wendy Knox, and an October 19 reading of Yukiko Motoya’s Vengeance Can Wait, translated by Kyoko Yoshida and Andy Bragen, co-presented with the Playwrights’ Center as part of an exchange program with the Tokyo International Festival.

Rounding out the season will be Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days (November 3-25), directed by Rob Melrose; Emigrant Theater’s production of Blue Door (January 17-27), written by Tanya Barfield and directed by Jessica Finney; Warm Beer, Cold Women (February), which examines the songwriting of Tom Waits; Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts Desire (March 1-23), directed by Joel Sass; a new dance/theater work from Flying Foot Forum (May 8-17), created by Joe Chvala, Karla Grotting, Mary Ellen Childs, and Peter O’Gorman; and Naomi Iizuka’s After a Hundred Years (June 7-29), directed by Lisa Portes.

For more information, visit www.GuthrieTheater.org.