NEW YORK CITY: Theatre offerings at the 2015 edition of the Lincoln Center Festival, which will run July 6-Aug. 2, include appearances by Ireland’s Druid Theater Company, England’s Cheek By Jowl, a Russian production of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, a German production of a Harry Partch music-theatre piece and a Japanese adaptation of a Murakami novel.
Druid Theater Company returns to New York after its acclaimed 2006 marathon of J.M. Synge plays with “DruidShakespeare: The History Plays” (July 7-19), in a program that joins parts of Henry IV and Henry V into a single two-show marathon.
A production of Cheek and Jowl’s Ubu Roi (July 22-26) is next. A take on Alfred Jarry’s play, the show features an entire cast of French actors and will be directed by Declan Donnellan.
August Strindberg’s Miss Julie (July 27-Aug 2), a love story between a well-off woman and her house servant, has been one of Strindberg’s most frequently performed works. But it marks the first U.S. appearance by the acclaimed Moscow company Theatre of Nations, whose artistic director, Yvgeny Mironov, also appears in the play. The director is legendary German iconoclast Thomas Ostermeier, using a new adaptation by Russian playwright Mikhail Durnenkov.
The Ruhrtriennale’s production of Harry Partch’s music-theatre spectacle Delusion of the Fury (July 23-24) will receive its U.S. premiere in a coproduction between Lincoln Center Festival, Holland Festival, Ensemble Musikfabrik and the Ruhr. Heiner Goebbels will direct this maverick composer’s work, considered his magnum opus.
Finally, legendary Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa will celebrate his 80th birthday with the U.S. premiere of his production of Haruki Murakami’s internationally bestselling novel, Kafka on the Shore (July 23-26). The play follows a teenager, Kafka Tamura, and his alter ego, Crow, as they flee his home to escape an Oedipal curse.
