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It'll be a hot summer for St. Louis theater
(by Bob Wilcox - May 14, 2008)
An unusual mid-May lull in the St. Louis theater season offers an opportunity to look ahead to what the summer will bring us.
That’s not to say that the ‘07-’08 season has quite ended. Muddy Waters Theatre Company will open The Night of the Iguana, the final play of its season of Tennessee Williams, this weekend. However, they won’t be in their old home, the Theatre at St. Marcus, which is no more. Out in the cold, they have found shelter through the kindness of the new Gaslight Theatre.
The New Jewish Theatre also opens this week its final show of the season, the Charles Busch comedy The Allergist’s Wife. And the Black Rep has one more opening on its schedule, the South African musical Serafina, in late May.
The summer season of theater begins in Forest Park the Wednesday before Memorial Day with Shakespeare Festival St. Louis’ production of The Tragedy of Richard III, giving us another opportunity to relish the brilliance of its evil eponymous villain.
The other theatrical tenant of Forest Park, with a history that seems to stretch back almost to the days of Shakespeare, opens the day after Richard closes. The Muny has secured the rights not only to the recent Broadway blockbuster The Producers but also to the even more recent Disney’s High School Musical, which is a good bet to be the big seller of the Muny’s summer. They’re also bringing back the tried and true, as usual, with My Fair Lady, Miss Saigon, My One and Only and Fiddler on the Roof, plus one of those pastiches that Paul Blake loves to assemble, this one celebrating 90 Years of Muny Magic.
If you want tried and true musicals without the heat and humidity of Forest Park, head indoors to the air-conditioned comfort of the Kirkwood Civic Center’s Robert G. Reim Theatre and the delights for eye and ear of Stages St. Louis’ season. This year they bring us the 1920s in Thoroughly Modern Millie, the Bible in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Iowa Americana in The Music Man. For the young folks, Stages is doing The Jungle Book.
The late Colin Graham, former artistic director of the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, wanted a category in the Kevin Kline Awards for opera; opera, he insisted, is theater. Thus, any survey of St. Louis summer theater must include the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. Like the Shakespeare Festival, Opera Theatre opens just before Memorial Day, with Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman, to be followed in repertory with the perennial favorite, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly; the appropriately named and rarely seen Una Cosa Rara; and William Walton’s also infrequently performed musical elaboration on a tale from the Greeks and Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida.
Opera Theatre of St. Louis ends June 29, but summer opera picks up again when Union Avenue Opera opens Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore on July 11, followed by Verdi’s Otello on August 1 and Bizet’s Carmen on August 22.
Even that doesn’t exhaust the musical theater to be seen this summer in St. Louis. The Fox is bringing back Mama Mia!, the hugely popular ABBA musical, and New Line Theatre, recovering from its troubles at the Ivory Theatre, will offer our town its first production of the musical version of High Fidelity in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre at Washington University. And if you look around your neighborhood, there’s a good chance that you’ll spot a community theater near you putting on a musical — I count at least 10 that have been announced so far.
Nor does Shakespeare or other non-musical theater end for the summer with the close of Richard III at Shakespeare Festival St. Louis. St. Louis Shakespeare has produced the Bard for many summers now, and they’ll tackle the monumental King Lear in August in the Grandel Theatre in Grand Center, with the excellent Peter Mayer in the title role. The company will also present The Odyssey, adapted for the stage by Mary Zimmerman, whose version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses was a big hit for St. Louis Shakespeare a couple of summers ago.
Another venerable local group, ACT Inc., continues its tradition of presenting unfamiliar plays, often by familiar writers, with The Romantic Age, by A.A. Milne, of Winnie the Pooh fame. They’ll also perform Kevin O’Morrison’s Ladyhouse Blues.
Other productions come from companies extending their regular season into the summer. Stray Dog Theatre presents the charming Morning’s at Seven in June. The Clayton Community Theatre will offer the popular The Miracle Worker, about Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan, in July. Also in July, The Tin Ceiling, down on Cherokee at Compton, offers Sam Shepard’s fascinating True West. And First Run Theatre, which produces only local playwrights, has two showcases of new works, a collection of short plays titled Spectrum 2008 in June, and a thriller by Richard A. LaViolette called Death by Fiat in July.
Even this doesn’t quite exhaust the number of productions that will take to the boards during the summer. In St. Louis’ heat and humidity, thespians continue to offer their craft for your enjoyment.
Bob Wilcox also reviews theater for KDHX-FM, 88.1, and for Two on the Aisle on cable and on line at kdhx.org.
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