There will be plenty of the familiar in the Kennedy Center’s 17-production mainstage season — classics like Cats, Bye Bye Birdie, Jesus Christ Superstar as well as musicals for which Washington has a special affection, such as Come From Away and Next to Normal — but also some new work, including plays from Palestine, Cuba and the U.S.
And: a return of the übermusical, Hamilton.
The season will open with the only musical for which T.S. Elliot got a writing credit, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. Extracted from Elliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the musical features new choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler, who blew out the doors with his choreography for Hamilton. Trevor Nunn directs; the musical runs in the Opera House from September 17 to October 6, 2019.
The dancing continues in the Kennedy Center’s second show, Footloose, the show where rock-‘n’-roll goes to war against self-righteousness (guess who wins). This show, part of the KC’s Broadway Center Stage, will have a brief run: from October 9-13 of this year, at the Eisenhower Theater.
For the holiday season, the KC offers a triple-header: Love, Factually, in the Theater Lab; Come from Away in the Eisenhower; and My Fair Lady, in the Opera House.
Love, Factually reprises the Second City’s evisceration of the 2003 English film Love, Actually and, indeed, all things get gooey and sweet. “If you’re looking for a fun evening of holiday romcom parody, Second City’s Love, Factually delivers the goods,” DCTS’ Kate Gorman said in this review of last year’s Kennedy Center show. From December 3-31, 2019.
Come From Away, which debuted at Ford’s Theatre before becoming a surprise Broadway hit, returns to the Eisenhower from December 10, 2019 to January 5, 2020. This is the story, if you missed it, about how 38 planes, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attack on America, were diverted to the tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland, Canada — and the astonishing way that their Canadian hosts treated them. “This brisk 100 minutes smoothly dodges being a comedy about the events of September 11 by the grace of heart-warming Canadian charm and compelling personal stories,” said DCTS’ Alan Katz in this review. Director Christopher Ashley, who won the Best Director Tony Award for his work on this play, will helm this production.
And on December 17 of this year, the Kennedy Center will begin its run of the iconic My Fair Lady, Lerner and Loewe’s adaptation of the iconic George Bernard Shaw play, Pygmalion. Professor Henry Higgins elects to school a Cockney guttersnipe in the King’s English, and ends up getting a little schooled himself. We will be seeing the Lincoln Center Theater production, directed by Bartlett Sher; until January 19, 2020.
The Kennedy Center will start the new year with a production of Next to Normal, the Broadway musical about mental illness which achieved success after Arena gave Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt a chance to rework it. The result was “a fiercely unsentimental examination of the impact of chronic mental illness on a seemly typical all-American suburban family,” according to DCTS’ Gary McMillan, who noted that ” [i]ts rock-flavored score by Tom Kitt, reminiscent of the work of Jonathan Larson or Jason Robert Brown, conveys a considerable range of emotions and ideas to complement Brian Yorkey’s informed book and intelligent and really witty lyrics. The humor laced throughout the show is a key to its success; neither condescending nor derogatory…” The reworked musical won a Pulitzer Prize. Tony Award winner Rachel Bay Jones takes the lead; from January 29 to February 3 of next year.
The Kennedy Center begins its World Stages season with Grey Rock, a Palestinian production about a television repairman, still mourning the death of his wife, whose singular and stubborn vision it is to build a rocket to the moon. ” We are charmed by Yusuf’s stubborn insistence that he is only building one rocket, just one, not ‘go[ing] around building rockets’ as some might claim,” observed Piper Rasmussen of Theatre is Easy. Amir Nizar Zuabi’s play will be here for only three days, from January 30 to February 1, 2020, in the Terrace Theater.
The KC follows Grey Rock with another offering from its World Stages season — Huff, a one-actor Canadian show from the Cree artist Cliff Cardinal. Huff follows Wind, a young boy whose mother has committed suicide and who lives on a reservation where drug abuse is common. “Cardinal conjures a dizzying array of well-defined characters in Wind’s world: his womanizing father, carefree step-mother, protective grandmother, unstable older brother and innocent younger brother,” says Jordan Bimm of Now. “He also plays a skunk and its anthropomorphized smell, which scores some of the biggest laughs. Beginning with the play’s unforgettably harrowing opening scene, Cardinal cleverly engages the audience, occasionally regarding them as part of a hallucination or vision, so it’s intriguingly unclear if the fourth wall is ever broken.” From February 6 to 8 of next year, in the Family Theater.
A Scottish play is next, but not the one you commonly think of when you hear that phrase. Mary Wells’ Heroine: A Female Soldier’s Story is a true account of a lesbian who joined the U.S. Army before the repeal of its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. She went on to lead a squad of men in combat, survived sexual abuse, and went into combat alongside her assailant. February 12-14, 2020 in the Family Theater.
A Cuban play, The Clemency of Titus, an opera, closes out the World Stages portion of the Kennedy Center season. This is one of Mozart’s last operas, and has a small cast — only seven, which is tiny for an opera. Titus, a well-loved Roman Emperor, is the target of an assassination attempt. Unbeknownst to him, he is about to propose to the chief conspirator. This will be in Italian, with English titles. February 13-15 of next year, in the Eisenhower.
Two months later, the Kennedy Center will present another opera: Jesus Christ: Superstar, the iconic Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice rock opera about — well, you know who it’s about, from the beginning of his public life until the crucifixion. This production originally began in Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London, where it won an Olivier Award as best revival. Timothy Sheader directs; and Drew McOnie is the choreographer. From April 14 to the 26th of 2020, in the Opera House.
Broadway Center Stage returns for another iconic musical: Bye Bye Birdie, in which an Elvis-like rock god must enter the U.S. Army, but not before delivering a world-class public smooch to one of his faithful fans. This Charles Strouse/Lee Adams/Michael Stewart collaboration will run from April 22 to the 26th of next year, in the Eisenhower.
At age 26, Carol Strayed figured she had lost everything — and so she decided to take a thousand-mile hike from the Mojave Desert to Washington State. Her subsequent book became a best-seller and a movie with Reese Witherspoon. In the meantime, she wrote an advice column for the online literary magazine Rumpus under the pseudonym “Sugar”. She published a collection of the letters she received and her answers as “Tiny Beautiful Things“, which is now a play by Nia Vardalos. It will run at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater between June 2 and 28, 2020. “The production…is guaranteed to provoke a cathartic release,” assured Charles McNulty of the Los Angels Times. “You’ll not only weep but you’ll feel more emotionally intact for having done so.”
June will also see the return (and a fairly extended return it will be) of Hamilton, which some scholars consider the greatest musical ever written. If you’re prepared for some hip-hop about the Federal assumption of State debts or the need for a national bank — and really, who isn’t — you should prepare to visit the Opera House between June 16 and September 20 of next year.
What’s stronger, love or death? Well, if you don’t know the answer you may want to watch the Lynn Ahrens/Stephen Flaherty musical Once on this Island, in which a peasant girl on a tropical island uses love to bring together people of different social classes. From June 23 to July 12, 2020 at the Eisenhower Theater; this Michael Arden-directed production won the 2018 Tony for best revival of a musical.
His father has left the family; his mother is dying; his grandmother is an unwelcome busybody; and the school is full of bullies. To whom can 13-year-old Conor turn? There is a surprising answer in A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness’ acclaimed novel which has been made into a movie and is now adapted by Sally Cookson as a play. It will run between July 21 and August 9 of next year in the Eisenhower.
The Kennedy Center wraps up the season with Aaron Sorkin’s new adaptation of the Harper Lee novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee’s story, told from the perspective of a young girl, imagines the girl’s father as a 1930s Alabama lawyer who is willing to defend a Black man accused of raping a White woman — and defend him vigorously. Lee’s novel became a celebrated movie, starring Gregory Peck; the New York Times’ Jesse Green calls Sorkin’s version “beautiful, elegiac”. From August 18 to September 27, 2020, in the Eisenhower.
In addition to all this, the Kennedy Center will have its regularly scheduled productions: the Page-to-Stage Festival running from September 1-3, 2019, all over the place; the American College Theater Festival sometime yet to be determined in April of 2020, and Shear Madness, playing in perpetuity in the Theater Lab. The Kennedy Center will also offer a season for young audiences, which we will detail in a separate post.
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I believe it is Cheryl Strayed