ArtsWest Sets 2016-17 Season: SWEENEY TODD, MOTHERS AND SONS & More

ArtsWest Artistic Director Mathew Wright has announced his second season, running September 2016 through July 2017. Opening with acclaimed dramatist Terrence McNally's MOTHERS AND SONS, the six production season will include the magical story telling of PETER AND THE STARCATCHER based on the novel by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson; an Olivier Award winning new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's GHOSTS; a piercing glimpse into the teen-age world in Kirsten Greenidge's MILK LIKE SUGAR; Byrony Lavery's unflinching drama FROZEN; and the Stephen Sondheim musical thriller SWEENEY TODD.

"Through a variety of lenses, periods and styles, we are looking at the ways in which parents and children navigate the seemingly uncharted path out of childhood and into adulthood." shares Artistic Director Mathew Wright.

In addition to the six show season, ArtsWest is pleased to announce a co-production with ACT and Circle X Theatre Co. in the presentation of an incendiary new rock musicalBAD APPLES, directed by ACT Artistic Director John Langs at ACT's Falls Theatre in the fall of 2016.

MOTHERS AND SONS

By Terrence McNally

September 22 - October 23, 2016

2014 Tony Award Nominated Best Play

2014 Drama League Nominated Outstanding Play

By turns smartly funny and powerfully resonant, this latest play from acclaimed dramatist Terrence McNally (Love! Valour! Compassion! Corpus Christi, Master Class) portrays a woman who pays an unexpected visit to the New York apartment of her late son's partner, who is now married to another man and has a young son. Challenged to face how society has changed around her, generations collide as she revisits the past and begins to see the life her son might have led.

PETER AND THE STARCATCHER

By Rick Elice

Music by Wayne Barker

Based on the novel by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson

November 17 - December 23, 2016

2012 Winner of Five Tony Awards

2012 Nominee of Ten Tony Awards, including Best Play

When starcatcher-in-training Molly meets an orphan boy longing for a home, they embark on the adventure of a lifetime to protect a precious cargo. In this Tony Award-winning, magical and hilarious play with music, a dozen brilliant actors play more than 100 unforgettable characters. Peter and the Starcatcher uses ingenious stagecraft and the limitless possibilities of imagination to finally reveal the origins of Peter Pan, Wendy, the Lost Boys, their piratical nemesis, Captain Hook - and a far-off place known as Neverland.

GHOSTS

By Henrik Ibsen

Adaptation by Richard Eyre

January 19 - February 11, 2017

2014 Olivier Award Winning Best Revival

Illuminated with fresh poetry and dark humor in a stunning new adaptation from acclaimed British director Richard Eyre, Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts was seen as a scandalous work when it was first performed in 1892. The story follows the widow Helene Alving as she tries to start her life anew after the death of her philandering husband. She is determined that her son Oswald will not follow the same path through life as his father, but when Oswald returns home from a trip to France, she discovers that she may already be too late.

MILK LIKE SUGAR

By Kirsten Greenidge

March 2 - March 25, 2017

2012 Obie Award Winner
2011 Edgerton Foundation Winner (New American Play Award)
2011 San Diego Critics Circle Craig Noel Award Winner (Outstanding New Play)

It is Annie Desmond's sixteenth birthday and her friends have decided to help her celebrate in style, complete with a brand new tattoo. Before her special night is over, however, Annie and her friends enter into a life altering pact. When Annie tries to make good on her promise to her friends, she is forced to take a good look at the world that surrounds her. She befriends Malik, who promises a bright future, and Keera, whose evangelical leanings inspire Annie in a way her young parents have not been able to do. In the end Annie's choices propel her onto an irreversible path in this story that combines wit, poetry, and hope.

FROZEN

By Bryony Lavery

April 20 - May 14, 2017

2004 Tony Award Nominated Best Play

2004 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play

One evening ten-year-old Rhona goes missing. Her mother, Nancy, retreats into a state of frozen hope. Agnetha, an American academic, comes to England to research a thesis: "Serial Killing-A Forgivable Act?" Then there's Ralph, a loner who's looking for some distraction. Drawn together by horrific circumstances, these three embark on a long, dark journey which finally curves upward into the light. Angry, humane and compassionate, FROZEN is an extraordinary play that entwines the lives of a murderer, the mother of one of his victims and his psychologist to explore our capacity for forgiveness, remorse and change after an act that would seem to rule them out entirely.

SWEENEY TODD

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by Hugh Wheeler

Based on an adaptation by Christopher Bond

June 1 - July 1, 2017

1979 Winner of 8 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Book, Score, and Lyrics

Stephen Sondheim's bloody masterpiece Sweeney Todd, a worldwide success since its Broadway premiere in 1979, tells the tale of an unjustly exiled barber returning to 19th century London to seek vengeance against the lecherous judge who framed him and ravaged his young wife. The road to revenge leads Todd to Mrs. Lovett, a resourceful proprietress of a failing pie shop, above which he opens a new barber practice. Mrs. Lovett's luck sharply shifts when Todd's thirst for blood inspires the integration of an ingredient into her meat pies that has the people of London lining up.

Co-presented with ACT and Circle X

BAD APPLES

By Jim Leonard

Music by Beth Thornley and Rob Cairns

Directed by John Langs

September 6 - 25, 2016

Welcome to Club Abu, the wildest night in Baghdad. An incendiary rock musical that pulls back the curtain of one of the greatest moral challenges we have faced as a nation and sets it to a wicked irreverent back beat.

Subscriptions and Tickets

A variety of subscription options, including ArtsWest's Marquee Club and Marquee Club Gold, are found online at www.artswest.org. Season subscriptions are available now with single tickets being offered by July 31, 2016.

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