Ford’s Theatre Announces 2005-2006 Season

Leading Ladies, set to run September 23-October 23, concerns two out-of-work Shakespearean actors who end up disguising themselves as women to try to swindle an older woman out of her money. Mark Rucker, an associate artist at South Coast Repertory and the director of the Charles Busch film Die Mommie Die, will helm the production. Leading Ladies was presented last year at both the Cleveland Playhouse and the Alley Theater in Houston.

From November 16, 2005 through January 1, 2006, Ford’s will revive one of its most successful productions from last season: A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas, adapted by Michael Wilson from the Dickens novel and directed by Matt August. Martin Rayner, who co-starred in the Broadway production of The Invention of Love and the Drama Desk Award-winning Off-Broadway show Travels With My Aunt, will reprise his role as Ebenezer Scrooge.

Veteran actor James Whitmore will return to Ford’s Theatre to star in Trying under the direction of Gus Kaikonnen, January 20-February 19, 2006. This personal view of the final days of Francis Biddle, U.S. attorney general under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is based on the playwright’s real-life experience as Biddle’s secretary in the mid 1960s. The play had an Off-Broadway run in 2004.

The season will conclude with Shenandoah as directed by Jeff Calhoun, a 2004 Tony Award nominee for his staging of Big River and the director of the current Broadway musical Brooklyn. Winner of the 1975 Tony Award for Best Musical, Shenandoah tells the story of Charlie Anderson, a Virginia farmer who unsuccessfully attempts to keep his family uninvolved in the Civil War. The show will play March 17 – May 21, 2006.

For more information on Ford’s Theatre, call 202-347-4833 or visit www.fordstheatre.org.