Carla Ching's family caper comedy FAST COMPANY completes the 2015-16 Lyric Stage season!
The Lyric Stage loves stories that focus on family, but wait til you meet Blue and her family in Fast Company.
Blue's mom, Mable Kwan, is a tough cookie and the best grifter who ever lived... and she raised her kids to be just like her. Son Francis is the top roper around and H is the number one fixer. But it's Blue - the outcast of the family - who surprises everyone by putting together the score of the decade. Fast Company is a fast, funny, and dangerous theatrical crime caper that will keep you guessing about who's on top and who's getting conned.
As playwright Carla Ching wrote, "I could say that Fast Company is about grifts, game theory, and magic. And it is. But at its essence, it's about family."
7-play and 4-play subscriptions are now on sale for the 2015-16 season which runs from September, 2015 through June, 2016. Prices start at $165 and offer savings of up to 26% off regular ticket prices. That's like getting one play free! Single tickets will go on sale later this summer.
2015-16 Season play descriptions:
MY FAIR LADY
Book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner
Music by Frederick Loewe
Directed by Scott Edmiston
Music Director, Catherine Stornetta
September 4 - October 11, 2015
As the Lyric Stage has shown with Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, Big River, and more, our forte is turning a grand musical into a completely thrilling event in our uniquely intimate space. Now, director Scott Edmiston will re-fashion My Fair Lady, the delightful story of a down-on-her- luck London flower girl taken on as an "experiment" by a chauvinistic speech therapist, into another Lyric Stage winner. Based on George Bernard Shaw's beloved play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady introduced the world to a treasure trove of classic tunes including "I Could Have Danced All Night," "On the Street Where You Live," "The Rain in Spain," and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face."
SATURDAY NIGHT/SUNDAY MORNING
by Katori Hall
Directed by Dawn Simmons
October 23 - November 21, 2015
In the tradition of the moving Intimate Apparel and hilarious By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning is a "fresh, spontaneous, and highly watchable"* play that brings together seven African-American women in a Memphis beauty parlor/boarding house during the waning days of World War II. As they wrestle with the uncertainty of what the future will hold when, and if, their men return, they fight dirty - with each other and with their own fears and desires - uncovering newfound friendship and love. Katori Hall is an exciting new theatrical voice best known for her play The Mountaintop, about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s final night before his assassination.
BUYER & CELLAR
Directed by Courtney O'Connor
December 4, 2015 - January 3, 2016
When you're an out-of-work L.A. actor, what better job could you imagine than being the sole employee of the "Great Mall of Malibu" - Barbra Streisand's treasure-filled basement! The Lyric Stage loves to put the spotlight on Boston actors who have earned kudos here, so we're thrilled to feature Phil Tayler who you've enjoyed in City of Angels, Sweeney Todd, Stones in His Pockets, On the Town, Avenue Q, and more. Buyer & Cellar is a hilarious and surprisingly poignant tour-de-force for one actor who plays multiple characters including Oprah Winfrey, James Brolin, Bea Arthur, an imperious estate manager, and, of course, the divine Babs herself.
SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM
Music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Conceived by James Lapine
Directed by Spiro Veloudos
Music Director, Johnathan Goldberg
January 15 - February 20, 2016
The Lyric Stage's own award-winning Sondheim expert, Spiro Veloudos, now turns his unique vision to Sondheim on Sondheim, an intimate portrait of the famed songwriter in his own words and music. Taken from nineteen Sondheim shows produced over a 62-year period, eight of your favorite Boston-based musical-theatre artists (including Leigh Barrett, Christopher Chew, Aimee Doherty, and Sam Simahk) will perform a full evening of well-known, rarely-heard, and cut material, featuring video commentary from the master himself.
FAST COMPANY
by Carla Ching
March 4 - 27, 2016
The Lyric Stage loves stories that focus on family, but wait til you meet Blue and HER family in Fast Company. Blue's mom, Mable Kwan, is a tough cookie and the best grifter who ever lived . . . and she raised her kids to be just like her. Son Francis is the top roper around and H is the number one fixer. But it's Blue - the outcast of the family - who surprises everyone by putting together the score of the decade. Fast Company is a fast, funny, and dangerous theatrical crime caper that will keep you guessing about who's on top and who's getting conned. As playwright Carla Ching wrote, "I could say that Fast Company is about grifts, game theory, and magic. And it is. But at its essence, it's about family."
MR. BURNS, A POST-ELECTRIC PLAY
Music by Michael Friedman
Directed by A. Nora Long
March 4 - 27, 2016
In our mission to bring you entertaining and inspiring new work, we discovered one of the most exciting and challenging plays we've seen in years. Mr. Burns does the impossible: it manages to take the end of civilization and create glowing objects of wonder and beauty. After a world-wide catastrophe, refugees find each other huddled around a fire in the woods. To keep in touch with their past lives, they try recounting the "Cape Feare" episode of The Simpsons. Mr. Burns is an emotional epic about the human ability to survive . . . and to reinvent the world through the art of storytelling.
PETER AND THE STARCATCHER
Adapted for the stage by Rick Elice,
from the novel by Dave Barry and
Directed by Spiro Veloudos
May 20 - June 25, 2016
The 2015-16 season closes with an acclaimed new play that uses ingenious stagecraft, the talents of a dozen of our favorite actors, and the limitless possibilities of your imagination to create theatrical magic. Peter and the Starcatcher chronicles the adventures of Molly, a girl charged to protect a cargo of stardust from falling into the wrong hands, and an orphan named Peter who eventually becomes The Boy Who Never Grew Up. Peter and the Starcatcher is a swashbuckling grownup prequel to Peter Pan that will have you hooked from the moment you let your mind take wing.
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