Euan Morton and Johanna Day Join Hartford Stage's 'Midsummer'

Classics, award winners, and newer works will entertain and enlighten audiences next season at Hartford Stage.  The Tony Award-winning theatre under the leadership of Artistic Director Michael Wilson and Managing Director Michael Stotts, today announced the ten plays selected for the theatre's 45th Sapphire Anniversary season.  The six-play MainStage season will open with the return of the most-produced playwright in Hartford Stage history - William Shakespeare - with his delightful comic romp A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Next up is the world premiere of Daniel Beaty's astonishing Resurrection, which traces the lives of six interconnected black men on the same evening.  2009 brings Wethersfield, CT native Christopher Shinn's smash Off-Broadway play, the Pulitzer Prize Finalist Dying City to Hartford.  Next is a new stage adaptation of Harper Lee's beloved novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, followed by the Tony-winning comedy triumph, Noises Off, directed by Malcolm Morrison, former Dean of the Hartt School at the University of Hartford .  Closing the season will be the hauntingly beautiful gospel drama, Gee's Bend.   The 2008-2009 subscription season runs August 28, 2008 to June 28, 2009.

In addition to the MainStage season subscription series, Hartford Stage welcomes The Ladies of Summer, an exciting SummerStage lineup of crowd-pleasing hits that includes a limited six-night run of the legendary Elaine Stritch in her Broadway hit At Liberty.  The music of Ella Fitzgerald returns to Hartford in Ella, starring the phenomenal Tina Fabrique (Crowns). Actress and author Carrie Fisher closes the SummerStage season in her hysterical show-biz tell-all, Wishful Drinking.  The holiday season brings Hartford Stage's 11th annual production of a Connecticut's favorite yuletide tradition, the hugely popular A Christmas Carol - A Ghost Story of Christmas, again featuring spectacular flying effects.

Artistic Director Michael Wilson states, "We'll be kicking off our forty-fifth season with the theatre's most-produced playwright, Shakespeare, and the magical comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream.  It is a fitting season opener and each of our plays this season deal, in some way, with dreams-dreams of love, justice, and peace, dreams big and small,  dreams that frustrate, dreams that embolden, dreams that surprise and delight.  From fresh interpretations of the classic works A Midsummer Night's Dream and To Kill a Mockingbird, to exiting new plays from Daniel Beaty, Chris Shinn and Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder, to the antic comedy of Noises Off, our 2008-09 season is a feast of vital and entertaining plays, imaginative stagecraft and powerful themes that has, for forty five years, drawn people from all over American to Hartford."

A Midsummer Night's Dream will star  Euan Morton (Taboo) as Philostrate/Puck, Johanna Day (Peter and Jerry) as Hippolyta/Titania, David Andrew Macdonald (Coram Boy) as Theseus/Oberon, Everett Quinton (The Mystery of Irma Vep) as Egeus/Quince, Lucas Caleb Rooney (The Country Girl) as Bottom, Christina Pumariega as Hermia, Sanjit De Silva (Masked) as Lysander, Jake Lacy as Demetrius, Susanna Flood as Helena and Steven Boyer. 

Photo by Walter McBride/ Retna Ltd.

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