Baltimore’s Everyman Theatre has announced a 2012-2013 season which will close down its 1727 North Charles Street venue with the memory of war, and then inaugurate its tenure at its new downtown Inner Harbor location on 315 West Fayette Street with a series of domestic dramas and comedies, full of strategy and explosiveness.
The company begins its season with Donald Margulies’ Time Stands Still, in which a photojournalist injured in Iraq and her shell-shocked journalist lover struggle over whether they will return to the place where they got their wounds and their livelihood. DCTS’ Andrew Lapin noted that “[p]laywright Donald Margulies roots his characters, our eyes and ears to war, in a touching interpersonal drama.” Time Stands Still will run from August 31 to September 30 of this year.
War gets a much gentler treatment in Heroes, Tom Stoppard’s translation of Gerald Sibleyras’ Le Vent des Peupliers. This is the story of three aging veterans of the first World War, attempting to recapture their youth while living in a retirement home in late 1950s France. DCTS, reviewing the play three years ago, said that “It is witty; its characters are agreeably tart; it is a little bit sentimental; and it has the decency to avoid a clichéd dramatic climax.” Heroes will run from October 26 to November 25.
Heroes will close down Everyman’s Charles Street location, and the company will inaugurate its new space with Tracy Letts’ incendiary August: Osage County. Long-simmering family dysfunction explodes into all-out warfare in this dark comedy, which DCTS’ Hunter Styles calls a “meaty, disquieting chronicle of loss and tortured love” in which “every brutal, hot-blooded scene in this three-act opus feels like it’s been tightened with a crescent wrench.” August: Osage County will run from January 25 to February 17, 2013.
No sooner does August: Osage County close than Everyman presents God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza’s dramedy about two Uppy couples (i.e., Yuppies who are no longer young) who try to be civilized about a fight between their children, and fail miserably. DCTS’ Susan Galbraith said, “God of Carnage feels like a Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf for the 21st century. The characters are better dressed, finer housed, super toned, and a whole lot funnier. But playwright Yasmina Reza argues that the same god still reigns, and that under the surface we are still primitives. Scratch us and we don’t bleed, we begin to hurl things at each other.” God of Carnage will run from March 15 to April 7 of next year.
On April 26, Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, the 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winner for drama, will open. This is a story of two brothers, named Lincoln and Booth by their cynical parents, who live together in a tawdry apartment while trying to support themselves. Lincoln plays his namesake in an arcade game in which spectators are invited to shoot him; Booth is a professional shoplifter who hopes to graduate to operating a three-card monte hustle. Charles McNulty of the Los Angeles Times calls this play a “propulsive two-hander” and a “compelling drama”. Topdog/Underdog will play until May 19.
Everyman will close its 2012-2013 season with an updated classic – George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem, adapted collaboratively across the years by Thornton Wilder and Ken Ludwig. (Wilder began the adaptation in 1939 but died before he could finish; his estate asked Ludwig to finish the job, and he did.) This is a story of two young men who masquerade as master and servant while traveling the country looking for female companionship; the two young women they meet; and a bevy of rascals and lunatics, including one woman who deludes herself into believing that she is a great healer, with hilarious – and fatal – results. The Washington Post’s Peter Marks called the updated version, “charming” and “funny” and said “‘The Beaux’ Stratagem,’ as they say, ‘plays.’ It emerges from its extreme makeover with a generous new lease on lunacy.” The Beaux’ Stratagem will run from June 7 to the 30th.
Details of the new season are here. Renewal subscriptions are available now; new subscribers may obtain season tickets on May 16th online or by calling 410.752.2208.
