SPOKANE, CARNAGE et al. to Play The Alley Theatre in '10-'11

The Alley Theatre was founded over sixty years ago as Houston's theatre company. It exists to provide audiences with the highest quality theatre, offering a wide variety of work including new plays, classics, the re-discovered and the rarely-performed, and new musical theatre, with an emphasis on new American works - to provide the inspirational and the provocative - to make our audiences think, feel, dream and be entertained. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Gregory Boyd and Managing Director Dean Gladden, the Alley is committed to moving forward to increase its reach into the community, to further its collaboration with the best theatre artists working today, and to encourage and cultivate the new voices, new work, new artists of the American theatre. The Alley Theatre is in the heart of Houston's downtown Theatre District located at 615 Texas Avenue; bordered east by Louisiana, north by Prairie, west by Smith, south by Texas. For more information call 713-220-5700.

2010-11 Season

A Behanding in Spokane - 9/1 - 9/26/2010

New York Times calls the play "perfect, demented, ecstatic, sadistic and imaginative." The Wall Street Journal promises that "You'll spend 90 minutes laughing nonstop." Martin McDonagh returns to the Alley with his first play set in America, the outrageously funny A Behanding in Spokane, recently on Broadway. The mysterious, gun-toting Carmichael has been searching for his missing left hand for decades. Enter two bickering lovebirds with a hand to sell, and a hotel clerk with an aversion to gunfire, and we're set for an uproarious ride of love, hate, desperation and hope. "Wildly entertaining...truly explosive," says The Daily News. The Wall Street Journal calls McDonagh "one of the finest playwrights in the English-speaking world." Martin McDonagh's plays include The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Alley production, January 1999), The Pillowman (Alley production, February 2006) and The Lieutenant of Inishmore (Alley production, January 2008). McDonagh won an Academy Award for Best Short Film for Six Shooter as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for In Bruges.

Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up - 10/6 - 10/31/2010

"All children grow up, except one." Peter's sudden arrival into the lives of Wendy, John and Michael is the beginning of a thrilling adventure. Together they embark on a fantastical flight to the Never Land, a magical place of vivid dangers and unsettling beauty. There they meet the Lost Boys, a horde of pirates, and the wickedest villain of all time. This is J. M. Barrie's rarely produced original fantasy - the inspiration for all other versions - and still, by far, the strangest and best.

A Christmas Carol - A Ghost Story of Christmas - 11/20 - 12/27/2010

Houston's seasonal favorite that the Houston Press described as having "Spectacular London sets ...the inimitable Dickens' tale - spiced with the usual fog and an unusual twist on the ghosts past, present and future." A Christmas Carol - A Ghost Story of Christmas returns this year with a re-telling of Charles Dickens' classic story, that follows Ebenezer Scrooge's journey with the three ghostly spirits that visit him on Christmas Eve. A Christmas Carol instills a powerful message about redemption and the spirit of the holiday season, through a dazzling production created by Tony Award-winning scenic designer Tony Straiges (Alley's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), with costumes by Alejo Vietti (Alley's Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, Our Town, Rock ‘n' Roll, Mauritius), lighting by Rui Rita (Alley's Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, Sherlock Holmes and the Crucifer of Blood, Eurydice, Cyrano de Bergerac), and original music by John Gromada (Alley's Our Town, Subject to Fits, Treasure Island, The Pillowman).

The Santaland Diaries - 11/23 - 12/31/2010

Company Actor Todd Waite will reprise his role as "Crumpet the Elf" in the outlandish, and true, chronicles of David Sedaris' experience as a worker in Macy's SantaLand display. This compact, one-character comedy has been described as "a dream rendition at the Alley Theatre, courtesy of the ideally cast Todd Waite" by the Houston Chronicle. The Santaland Diaries is an hilarious cult classic, featuring comic encounters during the height of the holiday crunch. NPR humorist and best-selling author of Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris has become one of America's pre-eminent humor writers.

God of Carnage - 1/12 - 1/30/2011

Grown-ups behaving badly. That's what happens when a schoolyard scuffle leads four civilized adults to congregate in an affluent New York City home. But civilization quickly crumbles as verbal sticks and stones begin to fly. God of Carnage, a new savage comedy, took New York by storm winning the 2009 Tony award for Best Play and its Alley premiere promises to be equally delicious devastation. New York Times calls the play "First Class! A four way prize fight. Catnip for audiences." New York Post describes it as "Gleefully nasty fun."

A Weekend With Pablo Picasso - 2/2 - 2/27/2011

Acclaimed actor-writer Herbert Siguenza (¡Cantinflas! and Culture Clash in America) returns to the Alley with a new play. Siguenza brings his virtuosic writing, acting and design skills into Picasso's private studio, "Le Californie" on the coast of France, for an intimate and revealing weekend. Picasso's controversial and flamboyant opinions and creations gripped the public imagination and forever changed 20th century art. Delving into the creative mind and work of one of the most inspiring artists of modern history, this play explores Picasso's proclamations about ambition, destruction, creativity and art as an agent of social change.

August: Osage County - 2/23 - 3/13/2011

Variety describes this play as a "very juicy...epic evening...( a) richly entertaining dysfunctional-family juggles the hilarious, the poignant and the appalling on a scale seldom seen." Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, Tracy Letts' August: Osage County is a grand, gripping new play that tells the story of the Westons, a large extended clan that comes together at their Oklahoma home when the alcoholic patriarch disappears. Forced to confront unspoken truths and astonishing secrets, the family must also contend with Violet, a pill-popping, deeply unsettled woman at the center of this storm. Los Angeles Times says it is "sensationally entertaining...a feast for actors and audiences alike." Time Magazine named it the "#1 Show of the Year!" Don't miss this powerful production, a tale filled with unforgettable characters and told with unflinching honesty.

Amadeus - 4/6 - 5/1/2011

Peter Shaffer's Tony award-winning play is a riveting tale of obsession and vengeance. Loosely based on the lives of Viennese court composer Antonio Salieri and his young rival Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amadeus follows a murder plot that shocks and fascinates. After committing his life to God in order to be blessed with the ability to create the world's most sublime music, Salieri believes that God graced the rebellious Mozart with greater inspired creativity. Envious Salieri schemes to destroy Mozart and, in so doing, rebukes God. The film version of Amadeus won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1985.

The Medusa Body - 5/4 - 5/29/2011

Alley Company Artist and Pulitzer finalist Rajiv Joseph (Gruesome Playground Injuries, World Premiere at the Alley October 2009) returns with a psychological thriller that pits the corporate world against a 21st century artist in a violent and wickedly funny play about a woman with a paintbrush and a man with a spreadsheet. World-renowned artist Maya Akhet is commissioned by a global securities firm to create a painting for the lobby of their world headquarters. She loses her head, stops taking her medication, outwits the corporation's lawyers and begins to wreak havoc in her studio with a sawed-off shotgun. Unfortunately for her, removing the beast's head doesn't always kill the body.

Pygmalion - 5/25 - 6/12/2011

A unique masterpiece, Pygmalion is one of George Bernard Shaw's most popular plays. It is the story of phonetics professor Henry Higgins who bets that he can transform Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a lovely lady and pass her off in high society. Pygmalion is a modern myth and also a strikingly contemporary view of sexual politics and the science of romance. The screenplay of Pygmalion won the Academy Award in Gabriel Pascal's 1938 motion picture and inspired the well-known Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady (1956).