Kennedy Center Announces 2006-2007 Season

A reunion concert of Sweeney Todd starring Christine Baranski and Brian Stokes Mitchell, a new production of Carnival, and the Royal Shakespeare production of Coriolanus are among the highlights of the Kennedy Center’s 2006-2007 season.

The Center’s Eisenhower Theater will host the national tour of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Twelve Angry Men starring Richard Thomas (October 3-22), followed by the Broadway revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? starring Tony Award winner Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner (January 9-28).

Up next will be Carnival, the 1961 Bob Merrill-Michael Stewart musical, to be directed by Robert Longbottom (February 17-March 11), followed by The Tempeste/La Tempete, a multimedia production of Shakespeare’s classic by the high-tech 4D art company, based in Montreal (March 22-24). The Eisenhower season will conclude with the RSC production of Coriolanus, directed by Gregory Doran and starring William Houston in the title role and the great British actress Janet Suzman as his mother, Volumnia (April 4-May 6).

The Terrace Theater will house the Gate Theatre’s production of Samuel Beckett’s classic Waiting for Godot (October 3-5) and the McCarter Theatre’s production of Emily Mann’s new play Mrs. Packard (June 16-24). The play, which is part of the Center’s Fund for New American Plays, focuses on a woman committed to an insane aslyum by her husband of 21 years.

The Opera House will feature the national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical The Light in the Piazza (December 19-January 7) and The Phantom of the Opera (June 20-August 12).

At the Concert Hall, Lucie Arnaz and Robert Klein will join the National Symphony Orchestra Pops, under the direction of Marvin Hamlisch. The pair co-starred in the Broadway hit They’re Playing Our Song, which was co-written by Hamlisch (May 31-June 2). The Sweeney Todd concert will take place in the Concert Hall, June 22-23; it wil be a benefit for the Kennedy Center’s Education Department. The pair previously performed the show as part of the Center’s Sondheim Celebration.

The Center’s recently opened Family Theater will feature four specially commissioned works: an adaptation of Katie Couric’s book A Brand New Kid, a theatre project with the White House Historical Association, Debbie Allen’s Alex in Wonderland, and Walter Dean Myer’s Blues Journey.

Other highlights of the season will include opera singer Deborah Voigt in Salome, the Kennedy Center Jazz Festival, the National Symphony Orchestra’s Shostakovich Festival, the Kirov Opera and Orchestra performing Falstaff, and appearances by such dance companies as Alvin Ailey, American Ballet Theatre, Bolshoi Ballet, Paul Taylor, and Philadanco.

For more information, visit www.kennedy-center.org.