Oscar Wilde News

Cortland Repertory Theatre's 2011 production of the musical Chicago “razzle dazzled ‘em” at the Syracuse Area Live Theatre (SALT) Awards, winning in two out of the three Summer Production categories. The awards were presented on Sunday, May 20 at the Palace Theatre in Syracuse. Hosted by the Syracuse New Times, the SALT Awards recognize professional, summer and community theatres, each in their own categories. (more...)

Elements Theatre Company is showcasing A. R. Gurney’s Pulitzer-nominated play, The Dining Room, a window into a vanishing class of society from the 1930s to the 1980s. The production runs May 19-27, 2012 at Elements Theatre, Paraclete House, Rock Harbor, Orleans, MA. (more...)

Elements Theatre Company is showcasing A. R. Gurney’s Pulitzer-nominated play, The Dining Room, a window into a vanishing class of society from the 1930s to the 1980s. The production runs May 19-27, 2012 at Elements Theatre, Paraclete House, Rock Harbor, Orleans, MA. (more...)

Stage and screen stars Brooke Shields and Richard Chamberlain will take on the iconic roles of Chris MacNeil and Father Merrin in playwright John Pielmeier’s world premiere of The Exorcist at the Geffen Playhouse. Helmed by acclaimed director John Doyle, who won a Tony Award for his striking reimagining of Sweeney Todd, this stage adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s famous 1971 novel transforms the unsettling battles of good versus evil, faith versus fact and ego versus ethos into a uniquely theatrical experience as sophisticated as it is suspenseful. (more...)

Plays & Players celebrates their 100th Anniversary on May 14 at 7pm with a staged reading of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband featuring local celebrities of stage, screen, politics, and more. An Ideal Husband was first performed on Plays & Players' stage in the Spring of 1912, exactly 100 years ago. (more...)

Downton Abbey meets Broadway! BWW can report that Dan Stevens, star of the Golden Globe-winning series “Downton Abbey,” will play the role of “Morris Townsend” opposite Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain (Catherine Sloper) and Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award winner David Strathairn (Dr. Austin Sloper) in the Tony Award-winning play The Heiress. Written by Ruth Goetz & Augustus Goetz, The Heiress will be directed by Tony Award nominated playwright and director Moisés Kaufman. Performances will begin October 2012 at a theatre to be announced. (more...)

Franz Welser-Möst conducts The Cleveland Orchestra and an international cast in concert performances of Richard Strauss’s SALOME at Severance Hall on Saturday, May 19, at 8 p.m. and Saturday, May 26, at 8 p.m. The opera will also be presented at New York’s Carnegie Hall, on Thursday, May 24, at 8 p.m. (more...)

Williamstown Theatre Festival Artistic Director Jenny Gersten has announced additional casting for the 2012 Summer Season. A host of Williamstown Theatre Fesival veterans and talented newcomers including Becky Ann Baker, Marylouise Burke, Tyne Daly, Brandon Victor Dixon, Alison Fraser, Heather Lind, Amy Spanger, Jeremy Strong, Lili Taylor and many more, will take the stage during the Festival’s 58th Season. (more...)

The venerable Symphony Hall stage served as ground zero for the humor of David Sedaris as part of the Celebrity Series of Boston on Sunday. Socialized medicine, taxidermy, matchmaking, and foreign idiosyncrasies were only a few of the topics covered in his wide-ranging, hilarious essays. (more...)

The Meeting* hosted by Justin Sayre, called “a riotously funny and campy variety show” by Next Magazine, and "a rollicking, wry affair complete with funny political commentary on current events" by Gay City News, will present their newest edition on Thursday, May 17 at 9:30 PM. (more...)

Plays & Players celebrates their 100th Anniversary on May 14 at 7pm with a staged reading of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband featuring local celebrities of stage, screen, politics, and more. An Ideal Husband was first performed on Plays & Players’ stage in the Spring of 1912, exactly 100 years ago. Tickets to this event are $25 for general admission or $50 for general admission and a “meet-the-artist” post-show reception from 9pm-10pm. Prior to the performance, there will be a pre-show reception and silent auction, with doors opening at 6pm. (more...)

Closing Aurora’s 20th season is the World Premiere of SALOMANIA, Aurora Theatre Company Artistic Director Tom Ross’s first new play commission for the company, written and directed by award-winning Bay Area auteur Mark Jackson (Metamorphosis, Salome, Miss Julie). Workshopped and developed at Aurora in 2010, SALOMANIA features Madeline H.D. Brown (Metamorphosis), Mark Anderson Phillips (Small Tragedy), Alex Moggridge (Betrayed), Liam Vincent (California Shakespeare Theater), Anthony Nemirovsky (Awake and Sing!), Marilee Talkington (Crowded Fire), and Kevin Clarke (Shotgun Players). SALOMANIA plays June 15 through July 22 at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley. (more...)

Hennepin Theatre Trust presents the new theatrical event Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays, running May 31–June 16, 2012 at the New Century Theatre. Showcasing funny, heartfelt “mini works” that celebrate the courage to be in a relationship–any relationship, Standing On Ceremony’s smart and witty vignettes were penned by playwrights whose credits include two Pulitzer Prizes, four Obies, one Emmy and three Tony nominations. Wendy Knox of Frank Theatre will direct a stellar cast of six Twin Cities actors including Laura Adams, Shawn Hamilton Brown, Aimee K. Bryant, Jim Lichtscheidl and Mark Rhein, with one more actor to be announced soon. With this production, the Trust is working in cooperation with Minnesotans United for All Families, the official statewide campaign working to defeat the constitutional amendment that would exclude gays and lesbians from marriage in Minnesota. (more...)

22Q Entertainment LLC and GoAlleyCat Productions presents the West Coast Premiere of the New York hit, IT IS DONE, a thrilling new play in an environmental setting, written by award-winning playwright Alex Goldberg and directed by Ovation award-winner Michael Michetti (The Twentieth Century Way, Carousel, Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings). IT IS DONE will preview on Sunday, May 13 at 7:00pm & Monday, May 14 at 8:30pm and will open on Tuesday, May 15 at 8:30pm and run through Tuesday, June 12 at the Pig ‘N Whistle Restaurant, 6714 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood. (more...)

Mint Theater Spring Benefit will feature a reading of The Importance Of Being A Woman, a one-act play by Rachel Crothers, with a cast led by Sara Surrey (Rutherford and Son), Samantha Soule (A Little Journey), Kate Levy (Return of the Prodigal, Soldier’s Wife), and Stephen Schnetzer (Mr. Pim Passes By, The Truth About Bladys) onMonday, April 23rd. Eleanor Reissa directs. Leslie Hendrix (Susan from Mint's production of Susan and God and a fixture on “Law and Order” for 19 years as Dr Elizabeth Rogers) is going to introduce the evening. (more...)

Simon Callow has brought his highly acclaimed show BEING SHAKESPEARE to the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre at the Broadway Playhouse for a limited engagement through April 29, 2012. Performances began April, 18 2012. The Chicago engagement follows productions at BAM in New York and Trafalgar Studios 1 in London. Click below to watch Callow in action! (more...)

Mint Theater Spring Benefit will feature a reading of The Importance Of Being A Woman, a one-act play by Rachel Crothers, with a cast led by Sara Surrey (Rutherford and Son), Samantha Soule (A Little Journey), Kate Levy (Return of the Prodigal, Soldier’s Wife), and Stephen Schnetzer (Mr. Pim Passes By, The Truth About Bladys) on Monday, April 23rd at The Cosmopolitan Club (122 East 66th Street). Eleanor Reissa directs. Leslie Hendrix (Susan from Mint's production of Susan and God and a fixture on “Law and Order” for 19 years as Dr Elizabeth Rogers) is going to introduce the evening. (more...)

Cincinnati Shakespeare Company have announced their season line up for 2012-13, featuring a variety of Shakespeare plays and literary adaptations as well as THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. On tour 2012-13 will be Two Hour's Traffic's productions of THE TEMPEST and MACBETH, beginning August 5. (more...)

Williamstown Theatre Festival Artistic Director Jenny Gersten announced today the final production of the 2012 Nikos Stage Season and an additional pre-season offering for the Festival’s 58th, the second under Ms. Gersten’s leadership. Academy Award nominee Patricia Clarkson (Pieces of April; WTF’s The Ride Down Mount Morgan) and Bradley Cooper (Limitless; The Understudy at WTF) will return to Williamstown in The Elephant Man, written by Bernard Pomerance and directed by Scott Ellis, completing the Nikos Stage season and playing from July 25 – August 5, 2012. (more...)

To inaugurate its 10th anniversary season, Stolen Chair has partnered with Lady Mendl’s Tea Salon to offer a unique theatrical experience, “tea theatre.” Stolen Chair will pair its 15th original work, The Bachelors’ Tea Party, with a classic 5-course tea service. Written by Stolen Chair’s resident playwright, Kiran Rikhye, and directed by Jon Stancato, "one of the most daring and imaginative directors of his generation" (Martin Denton, NYtheatre.com), the play is open to the press on April 15 (5pm). Stolen Chair veteran Liz Eckert (Stage Kiss and Kinderspiel) is joined onstage by Jody Flader (The Vineyard Theater’s Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island). (more...)