Boston Spotlight: August 2005

The city couldn’t possibly be any quieter, unless it were Paris. But those willing to travel a couple of hours have plenty of tantalizing theater options.

The good news for Boston-area residents — relatively speaking — is that the North Shore Music Theatre’s production of the gospel musical Abyssinia, threatened by a fire at the NSMT’s home base in Beverly on July 14, will arise like a phoenix on August 23 at the Shubert Theatre downtown. Stafford Arima, who recently helmed the Off-Broadway hit Altar Boyz, directs an all-African American cast featuring Shannon Antalan as a singer/healer undergoing a crisis of faith.

Heading to the Berkshires, The Williamstown Theatre Festival’s new mainstage theater will house Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle, starring Michael McKean and Margaret Colin (August 3-14), followed by a revival of William Inge’s Bus Stop with Elizabeth Banks as Cherie and Logan Marshall-Green as Bo (August 17-28). Meanwhile, the smaller Nikos Stage features Lucy Prebble’s The Sugar Syndrome, with indie-ingenue Gaby Hoffman as a babe in the woods looking for love on the Internet (through August 7) and Oni Faida Lampley’s Tough Titty, about a young mother coping with breast cancer and the inevitable specter of self-blame (August 10-21).

The Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge is cooking with a revival of David Mamet’s American Buffalo starring Chris Noth (through August 13), followed by Souvenir, with Tony Award winner Judy Kaye reprising her intentionally off-key Off-Broadway triumph as singer Florence Foster Jenkins (August 7 – September 3). BTF’s Unicorn Theatre houses the IRA thriller Rat in the Skull starring Jonathan Epstein (through August 6), followed by Rick Cleveland, an award-winning writer for TV’s Six Feet Under, performing his solo show My Buddy Bill — as in Clinton. (August 10-20).

Having successfully secured a great old historic theatre in Pittsfield as its permanent home for next season, Julianne Boyd’s feisty Barrington Stage Company is finishing out its 2005 season with a flurry of productions: The Importance of Being Earnest is on the mainstage through August 7; a semi-staged concert version of Hair, starring Broadway babies Denise Summerford and Ryan Link, plays August. 3-7 at the Mahaiwe Theatre in Great Barrington and August 10-17 at the Berkshire Music Hall in Pittsfield; and William Finn’s Elegies will be seen August 11-28 at the Mahaiwe. (The composer himself will be on hand for talkbacks August 12 and 17.)

Out on Cape Cod, the Cape Playhouse is mounting the Fats Waller revue Ain’t Misbehavin’ (August 1-13), before segueing into a small-cast adaptation of Around the World in Eighty Days (August 15-27), featuring Matthew Arkin as Phileas Fogg. The Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro has a simple but staggering production of Caryl Churchill’s A Number, with a phenomenal performance by Nael Nacer (through August 14). However, the Provincetown Repertory’s closing show, The End, has met an untimely end: it’s been canceled and artistic director Lynda Sturner has amicably decamped.

The Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre thrives with a Pinter duo titled The Lovers through August 9, Allison Moore’s somewhat ponderous Hazard County through August 13, and Tracy Letts’ critically acclaimed thriller Bug creeping into town on August 18. They’re even initiating some tongue-in-cheek dinner theatre: Dierdre O’Connell and Steve Mellor star in a parodic lounge act, The Dream Express, at the Duck Creek Tavern August 21 – September 6.

For the past year, WHAT has also been putting some of its stable of skilled adult actors to good use in children’s shows under a big top. The current offering is The Very Sad Tale of the Late Mr. Stiltskin, which is being billed as “a Rashomon take” on Rumpelstiltskin. Why should adults have all the avant-garde fun?

Heading south to Connecticut, Hartford Stage is hosting the Kent Gash production of Ain’t Misbehavin’ (August 4-21), which was a hit at Gash’s Alliance Theatre Company in Atlanta, and at Trinity Rep in Providence last fall. At the gloriously restored Westport Country Playhouse, outgoing artistic director Joanne Woodward has resurrected a personal favorite, Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding through August 14, followed by Gregory Boyd’s production of the classic drama Journey’s End. (August 18-September 4) Meanwhile, The Goodspeed Opera House in Chester has a delightful double dose of musical theater: Julie Andrews’ production of Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend (through September 4), and hot director Darko Tresnjak’s reconception of the Michel LeGrand musical Amour at its Norma Terris Theater (August 11- September 4).

Finally, going northward to New Hampshire, The Peterborough Players are putting on a world premiere of artistic director Gus Kaikkonen’s Solidarity, a comedy about a New York player who seems to have it all (August 3-14). And Gloucester Stage is offering up founder Israel Horovitz’s My Old Lady (through August 7), the premiere of Bathsheba Doran’s A Living Room in Africa, which places an American couple amid the AIDS crisis confronting Botswana (August 11-28), and local favorite Paula Plum in her solo show Plum Pudding (August 21-28).