SAN DIEGO: Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, Christopher Gattelli, Michael John LaChiusa, David Ives and more will bring new work to the Old Globe in the 2015–16 season, the theatre announced today. The season comprises 11 productions, including three world premieres and two West Coast premieres.
“When I look through the list of names coming to share their artistry with San Diego’s wonderful audiences, I can’t help but smile,”artistic director Barry Edelstein said in a statement. “In musical theatre, comedy, drama, and dance, on the contemporary stage and the classical, these are quite simply the best we have.”
Gattelli’s dance-theatre piece In Your Arms (Sept. 16–Oct. 25) will open the season. Using music by Flaherty and lyrics to the title song by Ahrens, Gattelli solicited the help of 10 playwrights—Douglas Carter Beane, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Carrie Fisher, David Henry Hwang, Rajiv Joseph, Terrence McNally, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage and Alfred Uhry—to write mini-plays about love to which he added choreography. Co-conceived with Jennifer Manocherian, the show was workshopped at New York Stage and Film last summer.
Next up is Mark Hampton and Mary Louise Wilson’s Full Gallop (Sept. 26–Oct. 25), directed by Andrew Russell. The show stars Mercedes Ruehl as former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, who seeks revenge by starting her own magazine. The one-woman show originally premiered at the Globe in 1995.
Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (Nov. 7–Dec. 26) returns for the holidays for its 18th year. Directed by James Vásquez with book/lyrics by Timothy Mason and music by Mel Marvin, the original production was conceived and directed by Jack O’Brien, based on the famous Dr. Seuss story.
The new year opens with Ives’s The Metromaniacs (Jan. 30–March 6, 2016), a “translaptation” of a classic French farce about a group of young people crazy for poetry and love. Presented in association with Shakespeare Theatre Company, the play concluded its run at the D.C. theatre in March. Michael Kahn, Shakespeare Theatre’s artistic director, will again direct.
Next up is the world premiere of Anna Ziegler’s The Last Match (Feb. 13–March 13, 2016), directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch. Developed in the Globe’s 2014 New Voices Festival, the play is set at the U.S. Open tennis semifinals, where Russian player Sergei Sergeyev and American athlete Tim Porter vie both on and off the court.
Edelstein will direct his first musical with Rain (March 24–May 1, 2016), a new musical from LaChiusa and Sybille Pearson, who previously collaborated on Giant. The show is based on a short story by W. Somerset Maugham, which also inspired a classic 1932 film, about a group of American travelers in the South Pacific.
Nick Payne’s Constellations (April 9–May 8, 2016), which ran on Broadway this season starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson. Directed by Richard Seer, the Globe’s director of professional training, the play follows a couple through various possibilities of what could or could not have happened in the course of a relationship.
Lawrence Wright’s Camp David (May 13–June 19, 2016) is next, to be directed by Arena Stage‘s Molly Smith, who directed the show’s premiere there in 2014. The show chronicles 13 days in September 1978 as three world leaders negotiated Middle East peace.
Next up is Kimber Lee’s tokyo fish story (May 28–June 26, 2016), about a famous sushi chef who struggles to usher in the next generation. A director will be announced at a later date.
The theatre’s Globe for All program, which consists of professional Shakespeare productions that tour to under-served communities throughout San Diego , will be Much Ado About Nothing, to be directed by Rob Melrose of San Francisco’s Cutting Ball Theater. The show runs at the Globe Nov. 10–22.
In addition, he theatre’s Old Globe/University of San Diego Graduate Theatre Program will stage As You Like It, which runs Nov. 14–Nov. 22 and features the graduating class of M.F.A. students directed by associate producer Justin Waldman.
