FORUM Opens '10 Williamstown Festival, 6/30

The season kicks-off on Wednesday, June 30, 2010 with a WTF Main Stage production of the Tony Award-winning Burt Shevelove/Larry Gelbart/Stephen Sondheim musical, A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (June 30 - July 11). Directed by Jessica Stone (BUTLEY; THE ODD COUPLE) and featuring Tony Award-nominee Christopher Fitzgerald (YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN; WICKED; FINIAN'S RAINBOW) as Pseudolus, a slave who must win his freedom by playing matchmaker for his master, Forum combines the frothy wit of Sondheim (a Williams College alum) with crowd-pleasing base and bawdy jokes. This paean to the Gods of Comedy is a hilarious, musical romp through ancient Rome.

Artistic Director Nicholas Martin (PRESENT LAUGHTER, HEDDA GABLER) will direct Thornton Wilder's quintessentially American play OUR TOWN (July 28 - August 8). Set not far from the Festival's Berkshire home in the fictional Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, Wilder's masterpiece finds the beautiful in the mundane lives of people in a small town. Martin brings together a family of Williamstown favorites, including Becky Ann Baker (ALL MY SONS; ASSASSINS) and Dylan Baker (GOD OF CARNAGE; MAURITIUS; REVOLUTIONARY ROAD), Jessica Hecht (A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE; AFTER THE FALL) and Campbell Scott (THE SPANISH PRISONER; Roger DodgeR; SINGLES) as the local town-folk whose hopes and memories are chronicled in America's most beloved play.

On the Nikos Stage, funny-woman Judy Gold ("Ugly Betty," "Sex and the City") will appear in her new one-woman play, IT'S JEWDY'S SHOW! (June 23 - July 4), directed by Festival Artistic Associate Amanda Charlton (CAROLINE IN JERSEY; DISSONANCE). Following the success of her show 25 QUESTIONS FOR A JEWISH MOTHER, Gold returns to the stage in this hilarious look at her amazing life through the lens of the classic sitcoms of her youth. With multimedia, original music, laughter, and love, Judy shows us how she balances family and ambition in a world in which she sometimes does not fit.

Amy Herzog's (HUNGRY, WILLING) incendiary new play AFTER THE REVOLUTIONS makes its journey from the Festival's fellowship project last summer to the Nikos Stage this summer. It's 1999, and three generations of a radical leftist family meet in New York to celebrate the law school graduation of Emma, the family's youngest torch-carrier. A public revelation about her late grandfather, a victim of the blacklist, sends Emma reeling as the family begins to fracture. Shaken and betrayed, she must weigh her fierce politics and family loyalty to decide if the ends really justify the means.  Developed from scratch at WTF, After the Revolution is a play about love, family secrets, and the American Left.

In another homegrown production, Samuel J. and K. by Mat Smart (THE 13TH OF PARIS; THE HOPPER COLLECTION) arrives on the Nikos Stage after a hugely successful reading as part of WTF's Fridays @ 3 last summer. In this hard-charging play, Samuel J. surprises his adopted brother, Samuel K., with a trip back to his birth country of Cameroon for college graduation-but Samuel K. has no desire to face a place and a past that abandoned him. Samuel J. and K. challenges the traditional definitions of family and asks if a place we've only imagined can become home overnight. Festival Artistic Associate Justin Waldman (WWHAT IS THE CAUSE OF THUNDER?: THE ATHEIST) directs.

Two additional Main Stage productions and one additional Nikos Stage production, as well as performance dates, casting and full creative teams for the Williamstown Theatre Festival 2010 Season will be announced at a later date.

For more information or to order tickets, visit online at www.wtfestival.org.

 

Photo Credit: Linda Lenzi

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