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Goodman Theatre Artistic Director Robert Falls announced a new carrot for subscribers with the final addition to his 20th Anniversary Season: the Tony Award-nominated play Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire. Directed by Goodman Associate Producer Steve Scott, Rabbit Hole will run in the Goodman’s Albert Theatre March 10 through April 15, 2007.
“I’m very excited to bring Rabbit Hole to the Goodman, and to place Associate Producer Steve Scott behind the wheel,” said Artistic Director Robert Falls. “It’s thrilling to offer the Chicago premiere of one of the most emotionally stirring works on stage today, and to name such a wonderful Chicago director.”
Described by Variety as an “intensely emotional examination of grief, laced with wit, insightfulness, compassion and searing honesty,” Rabbit Hole tells the story of Becca and Howie Corbett, an ordinary couple whose calm suburban existence is shattered by a terrible accident. Their world is turned upside down, but rather than reaching towards each other for comfort, they find themselves drifting perilously apart. A revelatory new play, Rabbit Hole charts one couple’s journey from darkness to light with empathy and great imagination.
Falls also announced that longtime Chicago director – and longtime Scrooge – William Brown will again grace the Goodman’s A Christmas Carol stage this season, however, this time he’ll sit in the director’s chair, while A Christmas Carol veteran Jonathan Weir steps into Scrooge’s hum-bug shoes. “Bill Brown has won the hearts of Chicago audiences for the past five years as Ebenezer Scrooge,” adds Goodman Executive Director Roche Schulfer. “We can’t wait to see what kind of magic he’ll spin with his new role this season.” Goodman Theatre’s annual production of A Christmas Carol runs in the Albert Theatre November 17 through December 30, 2006.
The rest of the 2006-07 Goodman Theatre line-up now looks like this:
ALBERT THEATRE
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Robert Falls
September 9 – October 15, 2006
Stacey Keach returns to the Goodman assuming the title role of King Lear in a contemporary production that's sure to be a spectacle! Lear is Shakespeare at his most profound, an ancient tale of a king and his three daughters, which has become the most powerful drama in Western literature. Both an intimate family drama and explosive political commentary, Lear explores with stark violence and devastating wit the most basic questions of human existence: destiny, love and duty, friendship and betrayal, leadership and loyalty, and the overwhelming inevitability of a life nearing its end. Robert Falls’ 20th Anniversary Season production will capture both the epic grandeur and intimacy of Shakespeare’s masterpiece.
Radio Golf (part of the August Wilson Festival)
By August Wilson
Directed by Kenny Leon
January 13 – February 18, 2007
Aunt Ester’s house at 1839 Wylie Avenue is scheduled for demolition to make way for Bedford Hills, a slick new real estate venture designed to revive Pittsburgh's depressed Hill District—and boost Harmond Wilks' chances of becoming the city's first black mayor. But first, the government must declare the historic neighborhood blighted, unleashing federal money for its development. All goes according to plan until a mysterious stranger, claiming ownership of the house, forces Wilks to reconsider his path to success. A contemporary play infused with the spirits and dreams of generations past, playwright August Wilson’s last work for the stage completes his extraordinary 20th century cycle of the African American experience. This production makes the Goodman the only theater in the country to have produced each work in the late playwright's remarkable Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning canon. The Exclusive Corporate Sponsor of Radio Golf is the Sara Lee Foundation.
Oedipus Complex
Adapted and directed by Frank Galati
April 28 – June 3, 2007
We all know the story—or so we think—of a young man who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. Sophocles' monumental treatment of this theme has been a staple of world theater for more than 2,000 years. In this bold and provocative re-telling of the myth, Goodman Artistic Associate and Tony-Award winning director and adaptor Frank Galati reimagines Sophocles’ tragedy, fusing it with the words and ideas of Sigmund Freud—the man whose revolutionary theories crossed the boundaries of science by using the art of myth, metaphor and dream to bring meaning to the ultimate human drama.
Mirror of the Invisible World
Adapted and Directed by Mary Zimmerman
June 16 – July 22, 2007
Adapted from a great 12th century Persian epic, Mirror of the Invisible World tells the story of a young King, who, after falling in love with seven princesses—each from a different land—builds seven pavilions to house his beautiful brides. Each night, a different princess weaves for him another wondrous tale of love, loss and adventure. Praised for its rich theatricality when first produced in the Goodman Studio, Mirror of the Invisible World was deemed "a beautifully understated Kama Sutra that transcends sexuality" by the Chicago Sun-Times.
OWEN THEATRE
Vigils
By Noah Haidle
Directed by Kate Whoriskey
October 14 – November 12, 2006
Vigils is a surprisingly funny and wildly imaginative story of love, grief and the difficulty of letting go. Two years after a fireman died trying to save a baby from a burning home, his widow is clinging to the past—literally. She has trapped her husband’s soul in a box, and his body is wandering around aimlessly, ricocheting from one memory to the next, as
body and soul try to come to terms with their actions during his life. When a handsome wooer arrives on the scene, the widow must decide between the past she knows and the future that she can only imagine.
Frank’s Home
By Richard Nelson
Directed by Robert Falls
Produced in association with Playwrights Horizons
November 25 – December 23, 2006
It is summer 1923, and architect Frank Lloyd Wright has recently left Chicago for California—the edge of the continent—determined to embrace Hollywood’s youthful zest, mend broken relationships with his adult children and revive his career. He has recently enjoyed the successful completion of his latest “wonder of the world”—Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel—and is now poised to settle down and embrace his new home. But his splintered family still has deep-seeded resentments. Then news arrives of an earthquake in Japan that has crumbled Wright’s prized hotel to the ground. Or has it? A stunning new play from one of America’s best contemporary playwrights, Frank’s Home is a lyrical, heartbreaking story about one of our greatest, if less than perfect, visionaries—a man who created a new architectural vocabulary, but couldn’t create a home for himself and his family.
In The Continuum
By Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter
Directed by Robert O’Hara
A Primary Stages Production
May 25 – June 24, 2007
In The Continuum received its world premiere in September 2005 at Primary Stages in New York City—in a production The New York Times hailed “one of the highlights of the fall off-Broadway season! It pulses with life from start to finish.” The devastating problem of AIDS among African and African American women is a timely, egregiously overlooked problem that is only now getting the attention of the international media. Living worlds apart in South Central L.A. and Harare, Zimbabwe, two young women experience a kaleidoscopic weekend of darkly comic, life changing revelations. Featuring stunning performances by Gurira and Salter playing dozens of roles, In The Continuum envelopes the audience in its story of parallel denials and self-discoveries.