Franz, Gummer, Kind, Paulson, Rabe, et al. Set for Williamstown Season

Additional casting has been announced for the Williamstown Theatre Festival‘s 2007 season, which will feature productions of 10 works on three stages, including the newly opened Center Stage black box theater.

In addition to the 10 main productions, the festival will offer a Monday night series of readings and special performances including George Bernard Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell (July 2) and artistic director Roger Rees’ one-man show What You Will — An Evening By and About the Bard (July 23), as well as its popular late-night cabarets (July 12-14 and August 9-11), to be directed by Malcolm Gets, and a special evening with Tony Award winner James Naughton (July 30).

Following is an updated list of shows and casting. For additional information, visit wtfestival.org.

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Herringbone, book by Tom Cone, music by Skip Kennon, and lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh; directed by Roger Rees
(June 14-24, Center Stage)
Tony Award winner B.D. Wong stars in this one-man, multi-character musical, which recounts the childhood of a vaudeville wunderkind after he is possessed by the angry spirit of a toe-tapping midget.

Dissonance, by Damian Lanigan; directed by Amanda Charlton
(June 27-28, Nikos Stage)
Daniel Gerroll and Alicia Witt will star in this play that concerns a warring string quartet whose world gets more complicated when one of rock and roll’s biggest stars enters their world.

The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur; directed by Ron Daniels
(July 4-15, Main Stage)
Richard Kind will star in this classic Broadway comedy. Concocted criminal charges, wily politicians, love nests, and the daily grind of creating and selling newspapers are all in a day’s work for the members of a Chicago newsroom.

Villa America, written and directed by Crispin Whitell
(July 11-22, Nikos Stage)
Set on the sun-soaked coast of the French Riviera, this new play commissioned by the Festival explores the lives, loves and losses of what Gertrude Stein called “the Lost Generation.”

Blithe Spirit, by Noel Coward; directed Maria Mileaf
(July 18-29, Main Stage)
Jessica Hecht will star in this classic comedy about an author and his second wife who invite a local mystic to hold a seance at their house — and unfortunately summons the spirit of the man’s vengeful first wife.

Party Come Here, with a book by Daniel Goldfarb and a score by David Kirshenbaum; directed by Christopher Ashley
(July 25-August 5, Nikos Stage)
Hunter Foster, Malcolm Gets, Kaitlin Hopkins, and Kate Reinders will co-star in this musical comedy about a soon-to-be-wed couple who change their mind.

The Corn is Green, by Emlyn Williams; directed by Nicholas Martin
(August 1-12, Main Stage)
Kate Burton and her 18-year-old son Morgan Ritchie will star in this beloved drama about a schoolteacher shocked by the conditions in a Welsh mining town.

The Physicists, by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, translated by James Kirkup; directed by Kevin O’Rourke; presented in association with the Williams College Summer Theatre Lab
(August 7-18, Center Stage)
Roger Rees will star in this play about three inmates at the Cherry Trees sanatorium who believe themselves to be the world famous physicists Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Johann Mobius.

Crimes of the Heart, by Beth Henley; directed by Kathleen Turner
(August 8-19, Nikos Stage)
Sarah Paulson and Lily Rabe will star in the Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy about three sisters whose resentments bubble to the surface as they are forced to deal with assorted relatives and past relationships while coping with the latest incident to disrupt their lives.

The Autumn Garden, by Lillian Hellman; directed by David Jones

(August 15-26)
Elizabeth Franz, Mamie Gummer, Allison Janney, Maryann Plunkett, and Jay O. Sanders star in this play, set at a summer resort on the Gulf of Mexico in 1949, as seven friends confronting middle age assess the choices they have made and are about to make.