Samuel Beckett News

San Francisco's cutting-edge Cutting Ball Theater opens its 10th season with Eugène Ionesco's comic masterpiece THE BALD SOPRANO, in a new translation by Cutting Ball Artistic Director Rob Melrose.

A middle-aged couple awakens in a beautiful country house on a hill, surrounded by trees and glimpses of water. There's just one problem. They can't remember their own names, much less the relationship between them. Their ensuing pursuit of memory yields both terrifying and comic results, setting them adrift on a leaky raft of postmodern anxiety.

Jesus Christ Superstar, the first masterpiece from the legendary writing team of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, exploded onto the scene in 1971 changing the world of musical theatre forever. With a score of amazing songs - ?I Don?t Know How to Love Him?, ?Hosanna?, ?Everything?s Alright?, ?What?s the Buzz?, ?Superstar?, and ?Heaven on Their Mind?, this original groundbreaking production stars Ted Neeley in the title role. This Broadway/San Diego ~ A Nederlander Presentation will return for five performances only, at San Diego Civic Theatre, January 15 ? 17, 2010.

At the annual meeting of Goodman Theatre's Board of Trustees, under new Chairman Patricia Cox, the boards, artists and staff celebrated the success of its 2008/2009 immediate past season, one of unsurpassed artistic quality and diversity on its stages, and outreach into the Chicago community.

On Monday, November 23, 2009 The Players Foundation will present a Benefit/Celebration to honor the life's work of Jerry Tallmer, the legendary, prolific NYC theater journalist and critic who was a founder of the Village Voice and creator of the OBIE Awards. Artists and admirers will gather to toast the man whose inquiring intellect and visionary writings started many careers.

Broadway's Beth Fowler (THE BOY FROM OZ, SWEENEY TODD, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) and Noah Racey (CURTAINS, NEVER GONNA DANCE) set for The Irish Repertory Theatre's upcoming revival of 'Ernest in Love,' a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Ernest'

Playwright Edward Albee, best known for Who's Araid of Virginia Woolf?, gave a rare public interview at the Sydney Theatre Company, and had not too many complimentary things to say about the state of theater production today, according to a report in moreintelligentlife.com.

Peter Hall's production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM will star Dame Judi Dench, Charles Edwards and more. Dench will play the role of Titania with Edwards taking the role of Oberon. The rest of the cast will include William Chubb, Oliver Chris, Msimisi Dlamini, Richard Keightley, James Laurenson, Ben Mansfield, Reece Ritchie, Susan Salmon, Annabel Scholey, Simon Scott, Sophie Scott, Timothy Speyer, Rachael Stirling, Julian Wadham, Leon Williams, and Tam Williams.

The Irish Repertory Theatre continues its 22nd Season with 'Ernest in Love,' a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Ernest'

The Irish Repertory Theatre continues its 22nd Season with 'Ernest in Love,' a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Ernest'

New actors in the roles of young Ralphie and adult Ralph lead the cast in the fifth and final production of A Christmas Story at The Cleveland Play House.

Amaryllis Theatre Company opens its 2009-2010 season with Samuel Beckett's masterpiece, Waiting for Godot, from November 10 through 22 at Amaryllis Theatre Company's home in The Playground at the Adrienne (2030 Sansom Street).

The Spare Stage production of Lee Blessing's A Body of Water - a Bay Area premiere - opens November 6 and runs through November 22 at EXIT Theatre in San Francisco, with Spare Stage Artistic Director Stephen Drewes at the helm.

Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) has announced the New York premiere of Theresa Rebeck's new comedy The Understudy, directed by Scott Ellis with Tony Award winner Julie White as 'Roxanne'.

You don't need an economic crisis to appreciate some good theatre at less than the price of a top shelf martini but at $15 a pop the Fifth Annual Under The Radar Festival (running through Sunday at various venues, but mostly at The Public Theater) can keep you stimulated all day with an international grab bag of adventurous productions for less than the price of freezing your butt off on line to buy a TKTS twofer.

The title character - well, actually the title prop - of Sam Shepard's new entry, Kicking a Dead Horse, doesn't have to lift a hoof to make an impressive star entrance. Lying beneath a sheet that covers the entire curtain-less stage as the audience enters The Public's Martinson Hall, the slow deliberate removal of its covering at the play's commencement tantalizes viewers until we get what we came to see; a big dead piece of symbolism placed somewhat to the left of center stage. Also revealed at that moment are two large mounds of dirt suitable for tandem mountings of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. The wide open spaces prairie scene, put together by designers Brien Vahey (set) and John Comiskey (lights) has a kind of respectful artificial beauty to it, similar to the environmental displays you might see at New York's American Museum of Natural History.

There's a great moment in Cecil B. DeMille's gloriously overblown epic, The Ten Commandments, when Sir Cedric Hardwicke, playing Pharaoh Sethi, upon discovering that his beloved son Moses is really Hebrew, makes a proclamation that the name of Moses must be stricken from the history books, despite his many heroic accomplishments for Egypt, and that his name never be spoken again.  Moses, as far as Egypt was concerned, will have never existed.

When an elderly tramp is given lodging in the derelict home of two brothers, the ensuing relationships and shifting alliances intensify with hilarious and unsettling consequences in Harold Pinter?s great psychological drama, The Caretaker. Featuring John Kuntz as Aston, Michael Balcanoff as Davies, and Joe Lanza as Mick and directed by Daniel Gidron, The Nora Theatre Company presents The Caretaker from Thursday, October 1 through Sunday, November 1 at Central Square Theater. The Press Opening is set for Sunday, October 4 at 2 PM.

When an elderly tramp is given lodging in the derelict home of two brothers, the ensuing relationships and shifting alliances intensify with hilarious and unsettling consequences in Harold Pinter's great psychological drama, The Caretaker.

Native Chicago playwright Alan Gross teams up with director Steven Robman to bring his newest work, High Holidays, to Goodman Theatre. At the center of this four-character drama-inspired by Gross' own life and family experience-is young Billy Roman (Max Zuppa) and the anxiety-riddled preparations for his Bar Mitzvah in 1963 north suburban Chicago.