Rodgers & Hammerstein's ALLEGRO, Peter Sarsgaard as HAMLET and More Set for Classic Stage's 2014-15 Season

Classic Stage Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director Brian Kulick and Executive Director Greg Reiner, today announced plans for its 2014/2015 Season. The upcoming season for the esteemed off-Broadway company begins in October with Rodgers & Hammerstein's ALLEGRO, directed by Tony Award-winner and CSC Associate Director John Doyle. ALLEGRO marks the second installment of CSC's Musical Theater Initiative, which launched last year with the company's hugely-successful production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Passion, directed by Doyle. Considered one of Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein II's most personal and groundbreaking works, ALLEGRO was their third collaboration and first premiered on Broadway in 1947.

CSC's season continues in January as acclaimed actor Peter Sarsgaard returns to CSC starring in Shakespeare's HAMLET. Sarsgaard has previously starred at CSC in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, both featuring his wife Maggie Gyllenhaal. Sarsgaard has appeared in numerous films, including Blue Jasmine, Lovelace, Kinsey, Shattered Glass, Boys Don't Cry and Garden State. A director for HAMLET and additional casting will be announced in the coming weeks.

The season concludes in April with Chris Noth starring in Christopher Marlowe's DOCTOR FAUSTUS, directed by Andrei Belgrader (CSC's The Cherry Orchard.) Noth, who recently starred in the Broadway revival of That Championship Season, is well-known to TV audiences for his current role on The Good Wife and past work on such shows as Law & Order and Sex and the City.

The 2014/2015 Season will also include the following Special Series:

Monday Night CHEKHOV: THE SEAGULL

November 2014

After over a decade of exploring Shakespeare with CSC's popular Monday Night Open Rehearsal Series, the company turns its attention to another of CSC's beloved authors, Anton Chekhov, taking theatregoers behind the scenes to investigate his first breakout masterpiece: THE SEAGULL. Each Monday night, audiences will share a different act of the play with a different company of actors and directors as they work their way through this extraordinary dramatic meditation on the lure of art and love.

The Young Company:

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

By William Shakespeare

Begins March 2015

CSC's Young Company returns to its inaugural production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM to celebrate ten seasons of Shakespeare especially tailored for young audiences. This unique collaboration with the Graduate Acting Program of Columbia University's School of the Arts has now grown to reach all five of New York City's boroughs, introducing more than 16,000 young people to the power of live theatre and becoming the recipient of numerous Shakespeare for a New Generation grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

First Look Festival: IMPERIAL DREAMS

A trilogy by CHARLES MEE freely adapted from the works of Euripides

March 2015

Charles Mee, one of America's most venturesome and inventive playwrights, casts his antic gaze on the dramas of Euripides with adaptations of three major works: IPHIGENIA IN AULIS, THE TROJAN WOMEN and ORESTES, crafting them into a counter version to Homer's Iliad. Each play of this trilogy can stand alone as an evening of theatre, but taken all together, will give a unique and coruscating look at the Trojan War.

Subscriptions for the 2014/2015 Season will go on sale to the general public at 12pm on March 31, 2014. Visit classicstage.org for details.

Classic Stage Company is the award-winning Off-Broadway theatre committed to re-imaging the classical repertory for a contemporary American audience. Founded in 1967, CSC uses works of the past as a way to engage in the issues of today. Highly respected and widely regarded as a major force in American theatre, it has become the home to New York's finest established and emerging artists, the place where they gather to grapple with the great works of the world's repertory. CSC has been cited repeatedly by all the major Off-Broadway theatre awards: Obies, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work.

CSC's 2013/2014 Season began in September with Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, starring Elizabeth Olsen and Julian Cihi, directed by Tea Alagi?, and continued with The Last Two People On Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville, performed by Mandy Patinkin and Taylor Mac, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman; followed by Bertolt Brecht's A Man's A Man, directed by Brian Kulick with new music by Duncan Sheik. The current season concludes with The Heir Apparent, by David Ives, directed by John Rando, beginning performances March 28.

Past productions include: Anton Chekhov's Ivanov, starring Ethan Hawke, Joely Richardson and Juliet Rylance; the highly-acclaimed, sold-out production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Passion, starring Melissa Errico, Judy Kuhn and Ryan Silverman; Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, starring Christopher Lloyd, with music by Duncan Sheik; Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream with Bebe Neuwirth; Brecht's Galileo with F. Murray Abraham; Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard with Dianne Wiest and John Turturro; Chekhov's Three Sisters with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessica Hecht, Juliet Rylance and Peter Sarsgaard; David Ives' The School for Lies with Hamish Linklater; Unnatural Acts conceived by Tony Speciale; Ostrovsky's The Forest with Dianne Wiest and John Douglas Thompson; David Ives' Venus in Fur with Nina Arianda (Broadway transfer 2011/2012, Tony Award nom. Best Play); Shakespeare's The Tempest with Mandy Patinkin; Chekhov's Uncle Vanya with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Denis O'Hare and Peter Sarsgaard; Anne Carson's An Oresteia; Chekhov's The Seagull with Dianne Wiest and Alan Cumming; David Ives' New Jerusalem with Richard Easton; Richard III, Richard II and Hamlet with Michael Cumpsty; Yasmina Reza's A Spanish Play with Zoe Caldwell; Steve Martin's adaptation of The Underpants; Philip Glass's In the Penal Colony; Bill Irwin's adaptation of Texts for Nothing; Waiting for Godot with John Turturro, Tony Shalhoub and Christopher Lloyd; Entertaining Mr. Sloane with Brian Murray; Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party with David Strathairn and Faust Parts I and II.

For further information on Classic Stage Company, call (212) 352-3101, visit the theatre in person at 136 East 13th Street, or go to www.classicstage.org.

Photo © Lisa O'Connor/ZUMAPRESS.com