Theater News

New York Spotlight: May 2005

Very Warm for May

The cast of Sweet Charity(Photo © Paul Kolnik)
The cast of Sweet Charity
(Photo © Paul Kolnik)

What’s hitting the New York boards this lusty month of May?

First up are the three Broadway offerings that officially bring the 2004-2005 season to a close. May 1 sees the bow of the revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet’s acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning play at the Royale. It stars Alan Alda, Jeffrey Tambor, Liev Schreiber, Gordon Clapp, Tom Wopat, Frederick Weller, and John Williamson, and is directed by Tony winner Joe Mantello. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, the new musical from William Finn (Falsettos) and Rachel Sheinkin, opens at the Circle in the Square on May 2; this musical about angst, adolescence, and memorizing the dictionary was a hit earlier this spring Off-Broadway, and is directed by James Lapine. On May 4, the revival of Sweet Charity finally opens at the Al Hirschfeld. Christina Applegate (TV’s Married… With Children) stars in the title role of a dance hall hostess looking for love in all the wrong places. The classic Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields score includes “Big Spender” and “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” and also stars Tony winner Denis O’Hare.

Off-Broadway certainly isn’t going astray, though. Leading the openings this month are three major theater companies, each of which specializes in very different kinds of works. The York Theatre Company will be opening two new musicals, Stephen Schwartz’s new family show Captain Louie (opening May 8) and Stephen Dolginoff’s dark and disturbing Thrill Me, about Chicago thrill killers Leopold and Loeb (opening May 26). New York Theatre Workshop is presenting two new solo shows: Score, about famed composer Leonard Bernstein, on May 1, and Songs From an Unmade Bed, a music theater piece about a gay New Yorker searching for love in the big city. Playwrights Horizons opens Kathleen Tolan’s Memory House, starring Dianne Wiest, on May 17, and Julia Cho’s B.F.E. on May 31.

Among other Off-Broadway openings this month: Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros’s The Argument, about a couple at a critical divide in their relationship, at the Vineyard (opening May 11); the return engagement of Les Freres Corbusier Theatre Company’s acclaimed Boozy: The Life, Death, And Subsequent Vilification of Le Corbusier and, More Importantly, Robert Moses (also opening May 11); the Encores! production of the Bock-Harnick musical The Apple Tree at City Center (May 12-16); a new mounting of Oliver Goldsmith’s classic comedy She Stoops to Conquer at the Irish Repertory Theatre (it opens May 12); Flight, Garth Wingfield’s drama about Charles Lindberg, at the Lucille Lortel (opening May 16); Craig Lucas’s adaptation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie at the Rattlestick (opening May 19); and Rob Ackerman’s new play Disconnect at Classic Stage Company (opening May 31).