La Jolla Playhouse Announces Six Productions For 2009/10

La Jolla Playhouse's Artistic Director Christopher Ashley is proud to announce the six productions in the 2009/2010 season.

"So much of the joy of running a theatre comes from the ability to invite world-class artists into your home - and allowing them to make it their home as well," says Ashley. "At La Jolla Playhouse, our goal is to serve as an artistic home where the most exciting theatre artists in the country are given the resources to create works that drive them, and our 2009/2010 season welcomes some of the best to San Diego."

Beginning in summer 2009, some of the most prominent artists working in theatre today are bringing their wisdom, creativity and craft to the Playhouse stages, including: a West Coast premiere drama from Terrence McNally (Love! Valour! Compassion!, Master Class), a world premiere La Jolla Playhouse commission by Claudia Shear (Dirty Blonde, Blown Sideways Through Life), a new musical Page To Stage workshop production based on a Coen Brothers film, a revival starring Tony Award-winner B.D. Wong (M. Butterfly, Law & Order: SVU), a world premiere La Jolla Playhouse commission from Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife, Quills) and a world premiere musical comedy by Douglas Carter Beane (Xanadu, The Little Dog Laughed).

The season begins in early summer with four-time Tony Award-winner Terrence McNally's Unusual Acts of Devotion in the Mandell Weiss Theatre. A valentine to the indomitable human - but not always humane - spirit, this honest and compassionate work focuses on five Greenwich Village neighbors, each at a crucial crossroads in their lives.

Continuing its commitment to developing exciting new work, the Playhouse will present a commission by a true force of nature, Claudia Shear, in the Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre in June 2009. Christopher Ashley will direct the two-time Tony Award nominee in the world premiere of her play, Restoration, which tracks the funny and moving self-discovery of an art restorer hired to prepare Michelangelo's David for its 500th birthday.

The first musical of the season will be a laugh-packed summer event for the whole family, a Page To Stage workshop production of The Hudsucker Proxy in the Mandell Weiss Theatre. Based on the delightfully skewed film by the Coen Brothers, The Hudsucker Proxy returns audiences to the booming 1920s, where a naive new CEO attempts to throw the business world for a loop.

In summer 2009, Tony Award-winning actor B.D. Wong comes to La Jolla in Herringbone, a solo play with music in which a young musical wunderkind finds the road to fame and fortune contains an unplanned detour: possession by a demonic spirit. Wong embodies ten separate characters in this remarkable performance.

This fall, Doug Wright, the creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play I Am My Own Wife, which inaugurated the Playhouse's Page To Stage new play development program, returns to the Playhouse with a world premiere commission. The Playhouse is honored to welcome Wright back with his blistering contemporary adaptation of August Strindberg's Creditors, playing in the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre in September 2009.

November 2009 will see the return of Tony Award-nominated Xanadu writer Douglas Carter Beane with his world premiere musical comedy The Big Time in the Mandell Weiss Theatre. A wickedly funny satire, The Big Time follows two ambitious lounge singers who, in a twist of fate, become the world's only hope for salvation.

In addition to the shows in the subscription series, the 2009/2010 season marks the third year of THE EDGE, the La Jolla Playhouse signature program that brings audiences the most cutting-edge, ambitious, provocative theatre being performed today. Supported by the Irvine Foundation, THE EDGE showcases artists who experiment with genre, structure, language and design. Still to be announced are two productions in THE EDGE series.

Subscription prices range from $131 to $374 and are now available by calling (858) 550-1010 or by visiting lajollaplayhouse.org. Single tickets for the 2009/2010 season go on sale in spring 2009 and range from $30 to $100.

La Jolla Playhouse 2009/2010 Season In Depth
*Exact production run dates will be finalized in February 2009

Unusual Acts of Devotion
West Coast Premiere
Written by Terrence McNally
June/July 2009
Mandell Weiss Theatre

During a sweltering summer night, with the sweep of their beloved city surrounding them, Leo and Nadine's neighbors help them celebrate their fifth anniversary on their Greenwich Village rooftop. As danger lurks in the air, each confronts unfulfilled desires and secret longings for each other. With wit and warmth, Terrence McNally charts damaged cities and damaged souls, loves lost and recovered, and the joys of simple - but enduring - acts of devotion.

Terrence McNally, one of America's best-loved living playwrights, has a long history of success both on and Off Broadway. In addition to being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama (A Perfect Ganesh), McNally has won four Tony Awards. His work includes the plays Love! Valour! Compassion!, Master Class, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, as well as the books for the musicals Kiss of the Spider Woman, Ragtime and The Full Monty.

Restoration
World Premiere
A La Jolla Playhouse Commission
Written by Claudia Shear
Directed by Christopher Ashley
June/July 2009
Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre

Giulia, a feisty Brooklyn art restorer, receives the much-coveted job of "refreshing" Michelangelo's David in time for its 500th birthday celebration in Florence. Her encounters with the masterpiece's curators, guardians and tourists sparks a life-changing journey in which Giulia discovers the statue's imperfections and flaws, as well as her own. Directed by Christopher Ashley, Restoration paints a funny and moving portrait of survival, endurance and the impermanence of beauty.
Claudia Shear wrote and starred in Dirty Blonde, for which she received Tony nominations for Best Actress and Best Play; she also won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for her show Blown Sideways Through Life, directed by Christopher Ashley.

The Hudsucker Proxy
A Page To Stage Workshop Production
Book and Lyrics by Glenn Slater
Music by Stephen A. Weiner
July/August 2009
Mandell Weiss Theatre

When the CEO of Hudsucker Industries makes an abrupt and fatal exit from the company, the board of directors hatches a plot to drive their stock price down in order to buy up all the shares themselves. Enter Norville Barnes, a naive mailroom employee with a loopy new invention destined to fail, and a new Hudsucker CEO is born. Based on the Coen Brothers' 1994 film, The Hudsucker Proxy is a delightfully dark musical fairy tale with an original score.

Glenn Slater was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for his lyrics for the Broadway musical The Little Mermaid. Slater and Stephen A. Weiner recently partnered in Manhattan Theatre Club's Obie Award-winning revue newyorkers (Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle nominations) and are both recipients of the ASCAP Foundation's Richard Rodgers New Horizon Award.

The Hudsucker Proxy's creative team will be available for interviews and feature coverage; however, Page To Stage productions are not open to critical review of any kind. Media are invited to these performances in order to enjoy the work as well as the unique Page To Stage play development process. The Playhouse asks media to respect the safe space that has been created for the artists.

Herringbone
Book by Tom Cone
Music by Skip Kennon
Lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh
Directed by Roger Rees
August/September 2009
Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre

Set in 1929, this darkly comic solo play with music centers on young musical prodigy, George, who is pushed into the limelight to earn money for his poor family. Taken under the wing of Mosely, an old vaudeville performer, George soon finds himself possessed by the demented, murderous spirit of Mosely's late partner, Lou. As George's success grows, so does Lou's influence over George's mind and body, leading to a climactic showdown in Hollywood.

A rarely-revived 1982 musical, Herringbone stars Tony Award-winner B.D. Wong (M. Butterfly, series regular on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit). In a tour-de-force performance, Wong inhabits ten roles in Herringbone. Director Roger Rees is also the co-director of La Jolla Playhouse's upcoming Page To Stage production of Peter and the Starcatchers.

World Premiere
A La Jolla Playhouse Commission
Adapted and Directed by Doug Wright
From the play by August Strindberg

September/October 2009
Adaptor/director Doug Wright gives August Strindberg's Creditors a modern-day urgency in this compelling and savagely witty play. Two men - an artist and a mysterious stranger - strike up a seemingly innocent conversation at a seaside resort. As they exchange increasingly intimate perspectives on art, marriage and women - in particular, the artist's wife - undercurrents of sexuality, language and economics explode into a tangled web of intrigue, suspicion and revenge.

Wright returns to La Jolla Playhouse, where his Pulitzer Prize-winning play I Am My Own Wife inaugurated the Page To Stage new play development program. He is currently represented on Broadway by The Little Mermaid. He is also the author of the play Quills, as well as the screenplay of the 2000 movie starring Geoffrey Rush.

The Big Time
A World Premiere Musical
Book by Douglas Carter Beane
Music and Lyrics by Douglas J. Cohen
Directed by Christopher Ashley
November/December 2009
Mandell Weiss Theatre

Two down-on-their-luck lounge singers set sail for one last chance at success when they're booked on a United Nations cruise ship. When the ship is taken hostage by terrorists intent on destroying the world, romance and mistaken identities abound as hostages become heroes and radicals become hoofers.

Douglas Carter Beane returns to the Playhouse following 2008's Xanadu, for which he received a Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical. He is also the author of The Little Dog Laughed, which was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play in 2007, and has since played all over the country. Christopher Ashley directs The Big Time, continuing a long and fruitful collaboration with Douglas Carter Beane.

The nationally acclaimed, Tony Award-winning La Jolla Playhouse is known for its tradition of creating the most exciting and adventurous new work in regional theatre. The Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer, and is considered one of the most well-respected not-for-profit theatres in the country. Numerous Playhouse productions have moved to Broadway, including Big River, The Who's Tommy, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Walk in the Woods, Dracula, Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife, Jersey Boys, The Farnsworth Invention, Cry-Baby, and beginning March 2009, 33 Variations. Located on the UCSD campus, La Jolla Playhouse is made up of three primary performance spaces: the Mandell Weiss Theatre, the Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre, and the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for La Jolla Playhouse, a state-of-the-art theatre complex which features the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre.