A Tom Stoppard Play Heads to Baltimore's Center Stage

By Charles Shubow

Baltimore's Center Stage usually asks its subscribers to sign up for renewals initially without any indication of what would be included in the new line-up of plays. But Artistic Director Irene Lewis has broken with tradition this year and has announced one-half of the 2007-08 season.

Heading the line-up is the announcement that Center Stage will present a work by one of today's most brilliant playwrights, Tom Stoppard. Stoppard is currently the talk of Broadway with his trilogy of new plays at Lincoln Center entitled "The Coast of Utopia". Lewis has chosen one of his early comedies "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead". According to Lewis, "It's a play I've always loved, taking us behind the scenes of "Hamlet", where two of Shakespeare's most obscure courtiers play tennis and hold forth on life, death, and the meaning of meaning." This will be the first large scale play by Stoppard at Center Stage. His one-act comedy "The Real Inspector Hound" was presented in 1976.

 The musical of the season will be another Stephen Sondheim masterpiece "A Little Night Music" based on the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film "Smiles of a Summer's Night". It features a gorgeous score, most of the music in the waltz form. It won five Tony Awards in 1973 including "Best Musical". The cast, under the direction of Harold Prince, included Len Cariou (the original "Sweeney"), Hermione Gingold (best known for "A Music Man") and Glynnis Johns (Tony Award for Best Actress). Elizabeth Taylor starred in the 1978 film of the musical. It was also part of the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration during the summer of 2002 where the cast included Doug Sills, Randy Graff, Blair Brown, John Dossett, and Kristen Bell (the star of "Veronica Mars on the CW Network).

Center Stage had much success with their 2004 production of Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd".

 Melanie Marnich's "These Shining Lives" was presented this past fall at Center Stage via the "First Look" workshop program. This will be a World Premiere. Originally commissioned by Resident Dramaturg Gavin Witt during his tenure at Chicago's Northlight Theatre, the play "follows a close-knit group of women working as radium dial painters for a Chicago watch company during the 1920's."

 A fourth play may include a work by August Wilson. The two remaining plays yet to be presented at Center Stage are "Gem of the Ocean" (now at Washington's Arena Stage) and "King Hedley II".  This is still in negotiations.

 Center Stage will be presenting its 5^th play of the current season beginning Friday night, March 16, Eugene O'Neill's one-and-only comedy, "Ah, Wilderness". It runs until April 15. For tickets or subscriptions, call 410-332-0033.

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