TOPDOG/UNDERDOG, HANGMEN, and More Set For The Gamm Theatre's 2023-24 Season

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre has announced its 2023-2024 season comprising Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winners, landmarks of the American theater, and modern plays that have made waves in the theater world. Season 39 includes a 5-show subscription series beginning in September and concluding in May, as well as a limited run of the theater's popular holiday show, It's A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, in December.

"Our upcoming season will remind us all of the unique power and sheer delight of live theater. The combination of theatrical gems and genres spans more than four centuries and speaks to the longevity and vitality of this art form," said Artistic Director Tony Estrella. "We'll revisit two of our favorite authors at their comic best and revive three seminal American classics, each one shadowed by a desperate, often futile search for certainty in an unknowable world.

"The season celebrates bona fide modern American classics starting with Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog, a darkly comic and combustible look into the funhouse mirror of history. Later in the lineup, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee's peerless tragicomedy of self-delusion explodes on the Gamm stage for the first time since our 1998 production. We'll also mark the 20th anniversary of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt: A Parable, a dramatic masterpiece that is arguably more relevant in our moralizing age than it was on its off-Broadway debut. Season 39 is rounded out with classic and contemporary masterpieces that plumb the depths of humanity with humor. Making its Rhode Island premiere, Martin McDonagh's most recent Broadway smash, Hangmen, is a darkly laugh-out-loud shocker about the pursuit of justice in an absurdly unjust world. Finally, we'll revisit William Shakespeare's beloved comedy Twelfth Night, about the transformative alchemy of loss and love."

Season 39 subscription packages are on sale starting April 13. Prices range from $185-$315, with discounts for seniors, students, and groups of 10 or more. Subscribers also enjoy first access and $10 off unlimited tickets to It's A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play. Single tickets will be available starting in August.

Information and sales at gammtheatre.org or 401-723-4266.

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG by Suzan-Lori Parks | SEP - OCT 2023

Parks' Pulitzer Prize-winning fable of brotherly love and rivalry tells the story of Lincoln and Booth, named by their father before he walked out the door for good. Dressed as his presidential namesake and painted in whiteface, Lincoln sits in an arcade all day being assassinated over and over. His brother, Booth, stays in their rundown boardinghouse room practicing the street con game Three-card Monte in hopes of escaping his money woes. Haunted by their troubled past, inherited poverty, and the forces of racism, the brothers find that surviving the American Dream is the ultimate hustle in this often humorous and startling play. Don't miss this deeply theatrical experience by one of the most adventurous playwrights of her generation.

HANGMEN by Martin McDonagh | NOV 2023

It's 1965, and the death penalty has just been abolished in the U.K. In a small town in northern England, everyone wants to know what Harry Wade, the second-best hangman in the country, has to say about it. As the news breaks, Harry's pub is overrun with a motley crew of sycophants and a cub reporter hungry for a quote...until attentions turn to Mooney, a smiley, inscrutable visitor with mysterious motives. From Martin McDonagh - award-winning playwright (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Pillowman) and screenwriter (The Banshees of Inisherin; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) - this dark comedy-mystery is a criminally fun and macabre delight!

WHO'S AFRAID OF Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee | JAN - FEB 2024

From its Tony Award-winning debut for best play (1963) to its many revivals on the Modern Stage, Edward Albee's masterful 3-act play is an explosively comedic and harrowing masterpiece. On the heels of a university faculty party, middle-aged professor George and his wife, Martha, invite campus newcomers Nick and Honey over for drinks. What starts as harmless patter escalates to a full night of vicious, booze-fueled barbs, as the unwitting young couple is drawn into their hosts' all-out marital warfare. By sunrise, all secrets are laid bare and none of them will ever be the same. A landmark of the American theater and arguably Albee's best work, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? explores the illusions we create in the face of painful truths and life's uncertainty.

TWELFTH NIGHT by William Shakespeare | MAR - APR 2024

Mistaken identities, gender bending, and twins lost at sea! Love unrequited and love triumphant! This buoyant comedy, populated with some of Shakespeare's most memorable characters and clowns, has something for everyone. Penned in the celebratory spirit of Tudor England's post-Christmas Twelfth Night festival, the Bard's brilliant satire explores the mutable nature of gender, sexuality, and social standing with heart and humor. Experience The Gamm's signature take on Shakespeare, in a production laced with melancholy and peppered with mirth. Twelfth Night is a song of love and laughter for all.

DOUBT: A PARABLE by John Patrick Shanley | MAY 2024

St. Nicholas Church School in the Bronx, 1964. Sister Aloysius, the school's principal, starts to question Father Flynn's ambiguous relationship with a troubled young man - the school's first Black student. As the progressive priest and traditional nun are drawn into a battle of wills, motivations are challenged, and alliances are formed with possibly irreversible consequences. Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award, this riveting psychological drama raises more questions than it answers. On the 20th anniversary of its off-Broadway premiere, Shanley's engrossing parable about the perils of moral certainty is more current and necessary than ever.

Plays and dates are subject to change.

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