Craig Wallace, who smashed icons as an African-American Ebenezer Scrooge in Ford Theatre’s A Christmas Carol this season, will not only reprise that role next November but help lead off the season as Willy Loman in Ford’s Death of a Salesman.
Arthur Miller’s story about a man who mistook his illusions for the American Dream, considered by many critics to be the greatest American play of the twentieth century, will run from September 22 to the 22nd of October, 2017 under the direction of Steven Rayne (Sabrina Fair). Kimberly Schraf will play Willy’s wife Linda; Ford’s has not announced the rest of the cast.
Ford’s will follow Death of a Salesman with A Christmas Carol, with Wallace again in the featured role — this time as the tightfisted Ebenezer Scrooge, whose ghosts make him face his memories and doubts. Jeffrey Walker, who reviewed Ford’s Christmas Carol with Wallace as Scrooge for DCTS last December, noted, “This was Scrooge – the Man – imposing enough that there was a sense of danger…Coupled with his powerful and supple vocal instrument, Wallace’s Ebenezer Scrooge is a fully realized, complex character who truly transforms from start to finish and was a pleasure to watch.” Michael Baron will direct this production, which will run from November 16 to December 31 of this year.
Ford’s first play of the new year will be Timberlake Wertenbaker’s epic Jefferson’s Garden, in which a Quaker abandons his pacifist principles in order to fight in the American Revolution, and while doing so falls in love with an enslaved woman. He meets Thomas Jefferson — and Sally Hemmings — as well as other celebrated figures from the birth of this nation as he, and they, struggle with America’s most fundamental self-contradiction. “It’s an exciting, provocative play that crams an enormous amount into two-and-a-half hours,” says Michael Billington of The Guardian. Jefferson’s Garden will run from January 19 to February 11 of next year. Nataki Garrett (An Octoroon) directs.
Ford’s closes its regular season with a musical: William F. Brown and Charlie Small’s The Wiz, the soul-music, R&B and gospel reiteration of the classic L. Frank Baum story, The Wizard of Oz which has won seven Tony Awards. Kent Gash directs this production, which will run from March 9 to May 12, 2018, and Darius Smith provides the musical direction.
Supplementing the full-scale productions will be the 35-minute Richard Hellesen play, One Destiny, in which eyewitnesses to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln recount the events of that night. Mark Raymont will direct this play, which won the Washington Post award for Innovative Leadership in the Theater Community in 2011, and which will run March through June of 2018.
Ford’s Theatre season tickets are not yet available.
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