MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS & More Will Make a Stop at Hartford Stage

All aboard! The Hartford Stage 2017-18 Season barrels into town this fall with three gloriously colorful and vibrant classic titles, as well as three incisive and authentic looks at the human experience, according to Artistic Director Darko Tresnjak and Managing Director Michael Stotts.

The season lineup will include the McCarter Theatre Center's dazzling production of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig; A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare; Feeding the Dragon, a memoir written and performed by Sharon Washington; and Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, a poetic masterwork by Athol Fugard.

Hartford Stage also announces two world premieres: Edith Wharton's inimitable romance, The Age of Innocence, adapted for the stage by Douglas McGrath, and Sarah Gancher's Seder, an original play inspired by a true story.

Performance dates will be announced soon.

Tresnjak said, "The upcoming season is entertaining and glamorous. It is also political and provocative. It is a season strong in women's voices; it deals with race and with censorship; and it addresses the most pressing concerns of our age."

Launching the season will be Shakespeare's most perfect comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Tresnjak. Midsummer never fails to captivate audiences with its intertwined stories of love, lust, folly and madness. Tresnjak's Hartford Stage credits include Anastasia, currently on Broadway; Twelfth Night; The Tempest; Hamlet; Romeo & Juliet; and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, winner of four Tony Awards, including Tresnjak's honor for Best Direction of a Musical.

Next Hartford Stage will present Sarah Gancher's Seder, a premiere inspired by a true story, directed by ElizaBeth Williamson. A retired typist for the Hungarian KGB visits her former workplace, now a museum devoted to Communist atrocities. The horror of finding her picture on the museum's Wall of Murderers will lead to an explosive evening of dark secrets and astounding confessions.

Gancher said, "Seder is a shapeshifting epic that asks what responsibility each of us bears for the atrocities committed in our names. It's a heartbreaking story very intentionally told with a lot of humor."

With the year 2018 comes Feeding the Dragon, written and performed by actress Sharon Washington (The Scottsboro Boys on Broadway and Lady Anne to Denzel Washington's Richard III for Shakespeare in the Park). Washington plays nearly 20 characters in her own true story of growing up in the custodial apartment of a Manhattan library. "Moving, bittersweet and ultimately uplifting," according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Feeding the Dragon is directed by Maria Mileaf and is a co-production with Primary Stages in New York City.

With a locomotive full of suspects and an alibi for each one, the dazzling McCarter Theatre Center (Princeton, NJ) production of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express proves the perfect mystery for legendary detective Hercule Poirot. The comical thriller is adapted for the stage by two-time Tony Award nominee Ken Ludwig (Lend Me a Tenor) from the novel by Christie, whose other books include And Then There Were None, Evil Under the Sun and Death on the Nile. McCarter Artistic Director and two-time Tony Award nominee Emily Mann (Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters' First 100 Years) directs.

Critics for the inaugural production, now playing at the McCarter, said the whodunit is "glittering entertainment" (The Philadelphia Inquirer) and "sparkling . . . the play walks the tightrope between drama and comedy deftly" (DC Metro Theater Arts).

And next spring brings another classic novel to the stage: the world premiere of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Innocence, her celebrated New York City romance about an upstanding and respectable young lawyer, his fiancée and her free-spirited cousin. Adapter Douglas McGrath's credits include Beautiful: The Carole King Musical on Broadway and the film Bullets over Broadway (Academy Award nomination for Original Screenplay). Doug Hughes' many Broadway credits include Doubt (Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play), The Big Knife, Mrs. Warren's Profession and Frozen. He also served for many years as the Artistic Director at Long Wharf Theatre.

Finally, Tresnjak will direct the season closer, After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act. Written in 1972, set against the background of apartheid, Statements is a masterpiece by Athol Fugard, one of the great poets of the stage.

The 2017-18 Season is sponsored by the Greater Hartford Arts Council and the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development.

The six-play MainStage Season is on sale now and subscriptions start at $129, a substantial savings over the cost of individual tickets.

Visit www.hartfordstage.org/subscribe or call the Box Office at 860-527-5151. Please note that all titles and artists are subject to change.

Tickets to A Christmas Carol are also on sale but to subscribers only. A Christmas Carol is not part of a subscription series.

Single tickets for all shows will go on sale to the general public in July. However, group seats are available now for all shows via www.hartfordstage.org/group-sales or Theresa MacNaughton at (860) 520-7114.