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2006-2007 Season

2006-2007 Season

Radio Golf
By August Wilson
Directed by Kenny Leon
September 8 – October 15, 2006
The Huntington Theatre

It’s 1997, and successful businessman Harmond Wilks is poised to become Pittsburgh’s first African-American mayor. Wilks also has a surefire plan to revitalize the decrepit Hill District of his youth, but standing in his way is a ramshackle old house and the determined old man who claims to own it. Both moving and funny, this final chapter – depicting a fragile community wrestling with the temptations and risks of paving over its heritage – shows that while the challenges change, the struggle endures.

The late August Wilson is the celebrated author of the landmark ten-play cycle that chronicles the African-American experience through the 20th century. The Huntington has produced seven previous Wilson plays, several of which went on to national acclaim and numerous awards. Director Kenny Leon also directed August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean with Phylicia Rashad at the Huntington and on Broadway, and the 2004 Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun.

Mauritius
by Theresa Rebeck
Directed by Rebecca Bayla Taichman
October 6 – November 12, 2006
The Huntington Calderwood/BCA

Stamp collecting is far more risky than you might think. After their mother’s death, two estranged half-sisters discover a book of rare stamps that may contain the crown jewel for collectors, the Mauritius Post Office stamp. One sister tries to collect on the windfall, while the other resists for sentimental reasons. In this gripping world premiere, a seemingly simple salee becomes dangerous when three seedy, high-stakes collectors enter the sisters’ world, willing to do anything to claim the rare find as their own.

Theresa Rebeck wrote the 2004 Huntington hit comedy Bad Dates. A Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer for stage, screen, television, and radio, Rebeck wrote the plays Omnium Gatherum (co-author) and The Water’s Edge, scripts for “NYPD Blue” and “Law & Order,” and the screenplays for Gossip and Harriet the Spy.

Rabbit Hole
by David Lindsay-Abaire
Directed by John Tillinger
November 3 – December 3, 2006
The Huntington Theatre

Becca and Howie had the perfect life — a great marriage, a beautiful house, a wonderful family. But when they are faced with a parent’s worst nightmare, the death of their young son in a tragic accident, the couple must answer tough questions about themselves, their relationship, and their places in the universe. As improbably funny as it is heartbreaking, Rabbit Hole received great acclaim during its Broadway run earlier this year, and was nominated for five 2006 Tony Awards, including Best Play.

Author of smash hits Fuddy Meers and Kimberly AkimboDavid Lindsay-Abaire was born and raised in South Boston. A graduate of Milton Academy, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Juilliard School’s Wallace American Playwrights Program, he has won the L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award, a Garland Award, and the Kesselring Prize.

The Cherry Orchard
by Anton Chekhov
in a new translation by Richard Nelson
Directed by Nicholas Martin
January 5 – February 4, 2007
The Huntington Theatre

The award-winning team that brought you the Huntington’s acclaimed 2001 production of Hedda Gabler returns with Chekhov’s final masterpiece in a new translation by Tony Award-winner Richard Nelson (writer and director of James Joyce’s The Dead). Nicholas Martin directs and Kate Burton (Hedda Gabler, “Grey’s Anatomy”) stars as Madame Ranevskaya, the irresponsible but hopeful soul who returns from Paris to Russia to find her family’s estate on the auction block. Fading memories of past glory haunt the family as they await a miracle that never comes. The Cherry Orchard is one of the most heartrending comedies ever written — a story you’ll never forget.

Well
by Lisa Kron
Directed by Leigh Silverman
March 9 – April 8, 2007
The Huntington Theatre

Poor Lisa Kron. All she wants to do is put on a nice, orderly little play about her family, growing up, and how she got cured of her allergies. But her mother, who’s watching the play from her living room just…over there, keeps interrupting, offering snacks to the audience, telling her own versions of Lisa’s carefully constructed memories, and causing chaos with the increasingly baffled cast.

A play for anyone who’s ever had a mother, Well is Lisa Kron’s hilarious, touching, and utterly original autobiographical comedy about mothers and daughters, mind and body, social activism, and the theatre itself. The critics’ darling of the 2006 Broadway season, Well features Lisa Kron recreating her Tony Award-nominated role for Huntington audiences, and also stars Emmy award winner Mary Pat Gleason as Ann Kron.

Persephone
by Noah Haidle
Directed by Nicholas Martin
March 30 – May 6, 2007
The Huntington Calderwood/BCA

Meet Demeter, an exquisite statue of the Greek goddess, as she’s being sculpted during the Italian Renaissance. Those who admire her see only stone and fortitude, but she has very real thoughts and desires. Fast-forward 500 years as Demeter finds herself in a present-day American city park, where she becomes a powerful symbol, an illicit landmark, a target. Witness to hilarious and horrible human foibles, she’s desperate for someone, anyone to hear her thoughts. This world premiere introduces Huntington audiences to the irreverent and eccentric wit of Noah Haidle, a truly original voice in American theatre.

Present Laughter
by Noël Coward
Directed by Nicholas Martin
May 18 – June 17, 2007
The Huntington Theatre

Stage, screen, and television star Victor Garber stars as aging matinee idol Garry Essendine in one of Noël Coward’s funniest and most delightful comedies. Devastatingly handsome and thoroughly charming, Garry lives his life like it’s one grand performance. But on the eve of a major tour, things fall apart in hysterical fashion as he juggles old flames, a crazed playwright, and (gasp!) middle age. Nicholas Martin, the Huntington’s own master of laughter, directs.

Kiki & Herb: Alive from Broadway
Created and performed by
Justin Bond & Kenny Mellman
June 13 – June 30, 2007
The Huntington Calderwood/BCA

Kiki DuRane is a brash, boozy, septuagenarian chanteuse. She’s never much cared what other people think, but she’s always willing to say what she thinks. Onstage with her stalwart accompanist and only living friend Herb, Kiki stumbles her way through a selection of songs, punctuated by political rants, searching social commentary, and recollections of a lifetime filled with unforgettable memories. Not satisfied simply doing endless versions of cabaret standards, Kiki and Herb display their unique musical prowess reinventing popular songs by great 20th and 21st-century artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Joni Mitchell, Styx, Pat Benatar, Radiohead, Nirvana, Bonnie Tyler, and Britney Spears.

The outrageous Kiki and Herb, the alter egos Justin Bond and Kenny Mellman, bring their smash-hit Broadway show to Boston for the first time in a limited run. Fresh off having Kiki & Herb: Alive from Broadway named one of the ten best Broadway shows of 2006 by The New York Times, the duo’s signature blend of old showbiz antics and indie-rock attitude will have Boston audiences swooning with adoration and doubling over with laughter.