Annapolis’ Compass Rose Theatre will grace its new digs at 1623 Forest Drive with a 5-play 2018-2019 season, including three contemporary plays about art and two classic musicals.
Compass Rose will kick of the season with Theresa Reebek’s The Understudy, which is actually more about the understudy of an understudy. A spectacularly popular movie star is cast in a newly-discovered Franz Kafka play. His understudy is a less spectacularly popular movie star. Our hero, Harry, is his understudy, an actual actor. Reebek brings her customary laser focus to Harry’s struggle to succeed and the understudy, Jake’s, struggle to be worthy of success, as well as the frustrations of Roxanne, who was once an actor (and Harry’s fiancée) and is now a stage manager. DCTS’s Jayne Blanchard called The Understudy “boisterous and mind-bending” when Everyman did it in 2014. From September 28 to November 4, 2018.
In our cynical age, perhaps a musical about a leader whose virtues are all smoke and mirrors is the best thing for the holidays. In any event, Compass Rose will be doing The Wizard of Oz from November 16 to December 23 of this year. Dorothy, having been hijacked (along with her little dog, Toto) from Kansas by an errant wind, enlists the aid of — well, you know how this story goes.
In January, Annapolis may be blanketed in white but at Compass Rose the dominant color will be Red, as the company produces John Logan’s bio-drama about the supernally gifted painter Mark Rothko. In Red, Rothko, the last of the abstract expressionists, has been commissioned to do paintings for the new Four Seasons restaurant. As he works in his cell-like studio, Rothko and his young assistant explore the work they are doing and why they are doing it. Ms. Blanchard again: “it is bracing to watch a play like Red that depicts genuine intellectual arguments and two men passionately arguing about art—as if it really matters.” From January 11 to February 10, 2019.
Miguel de Cervantes, poet and tax collector, is in a Spanish jail, awaiting a “trial” before Inquisitors on the charge of foreclosing on a monastery. His fellow prisoners, coveting the contents of his trunk, arraign him for their own trial, on the charge of being a bad poet. For his defense, Cervantes asks them to help him stage a play he has written. The result, of course, is “Don Quixote” and the story we see is Man of La Mancha. We’ll see it at Compass Rose from the first to the thirty-first of March, 2019.
We close the Compass Rose season in County Kerry, Ireland, during the worst of that nation’s economic troubles. An American movie company has come to Kerry to film a period piece, and the town, desperate for cash money, flocks to be hired as extras. Two of the indigenous indigents, Jack and Charlie, become friends and — do they dare to dream of something beyond crowd scenes? DCTS’ John Bavoso calls Stones in his Pockets “an authentically-felt tale of what happens to a person when he or she has no options, no future, and no way out.” Marie Jones’ play will run from April 19 to May 19 of next year.
Tickets are on sale now at Compass Rose.
