Olney Theatre Center Announces 2018-19 Season
(© David Gordon)
Olney Theatre Center has announced plans for 2018-19 season. In addition to two American premieres, the resident professional premieres of three major Broadway musicals, the company will also present a new concert series. In total, 19 different titles will be produced, presented, or toured.
The season opens on the Mainstage with a new production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic,
South Pacific (August 31-October 7). Then, leading up to the midterm elections, the American premiere of James Graham's political comedy Labour of Love (September 26-October 28) will open the season in the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab.
The holiday season at Olney will bring Elf The Musical to the Mainstage (November 9-January 6), directed by Michael Bobbitt, artistic director of Adventure Theatre and choreographed by Tara Jeanne Vallee. The first of three Resident Professional Premieres at Olney this season is based on the hit Will Ferrell movie.
The first show in 2019 brings the season's second Resident Professional Premiere with Once (February 6-March 10), based on the Oscar-winning independent film. The Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab begins 2019 with another American Premiere, Ella Hickson's Oil (February 27-March 31), directed by Tracy Brigden, the former artistic director of the highly regarded City Theatre in Pittsburgh. The work follows mothers and daughters over two centuries, from the dawn of the age of oil in 1889 to its "peak-oil" demise sometime in the not-too-distant future. Olney's senior associate artistic director, Jason King Jones will direct the local premiere of A Comedy of Tenors (April 10-May 12), Ken Ludwig's sequel to his Tony winner Lend Me a Tenor.
Next in the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab, artistic director Jason Loewith adapts Schiller's classic clash of titans for the #MeToo world with The Mary Stuart Project (May 8-June 9), providing a new take on the battle royale between the two most powerful women of the 16th century: Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots.
Summertime on the Mainstage brings the Tony Award-winning Matilda The Musical (June 21-July 21) as the third Resident Professional Premiere in Olney's season. Rounding out the season in the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab is the local premiere of Mike Lew's Tiger Style! (July 17-August 18) a comic satire about a Chinese-American identity crisis.
In addition, the Applause Concert Series will include three, one-night-only concert presentations of rarely seen musicals: Anyone Can Whistle, Finian's Rainbow, and Children of Eden.
