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guide To suMMeR TheaTeR by Jessica santina
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ow that the warm weather is here to stay—it is, right?—it’s as if we’re reverting to childhood, reveling in playing and the sheer joy of leaving our jackets at home. Local theater companies seem almost giddy at the prospect of summer. Their schedules are delightfully playful—jam-packed with whimsical, imaginative plays that will bring out the kid in all of us. You’ll find fairy tales, unscripted works, musicals, comedies and Shakespeare’s flat-out funniest stuff.
They’ve goT issues: goodluck MacbeTh When Peggy, a good Christian woman, hits her head on the sink and bleeds to death after tripping over her lover’s wooden leg in a motel room, chaos erupts in a small Texas town. It’s the hilarious setup to Del Shores’ cult classic Sordid Lives, Goodluck Macbeth’s Artown offering, running July 14-29. It’s full of quirky characters, plus gay themes, just right for GLM’s annual summertime tradition of producing LGBT-centric stories to coincide with Artown and Pride Week at the end of July. Next, things take a more serious turn with Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, Aug. 18-Sept. 9. It’s the fictional depiction of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last night on earth, set entirely in King’s room at the Lorraine Motel on the eve of his assassination. Tickets & information: www.goodluckmacbeth.org
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Real chaRacTeRs: ResTless aRTisTs TheaTRe coMpany Based in Sparks and fairly new to the theater scene is RAT, which emphasizes small productions and smart, character-driven scripts. For summer, that means a staged reading of Motherhood Out Loud, a compendium of vignettes written by female writers who share the ups and downs of life and motherhood. Seven actors will perform the readings over a weekend, June 16-18. Next up is RAT’s Artown offering, An Ives Thing, June 30-July 16. Everyone who’s done college theater has at some point studied David Ives, a master of absurd, comedic one-acts. RAT will produce nine of these, with the audience getting the opportunity to choose each night’s lineup of six, performed totally free-form—no setting or costuming, just the actors, the audience and the work. Opening in late August is Andrew Bovell’s Speaking in Tongues, an Australian psychological thriller/mystery about two couples engaged, unknowingly, in marital infidelity with each other. It runs through the first two weekends in September. Tickets & information: www.rattheatre.org
by Jessica santina
