TheatreWorks to Present 'Grey Gardens,' 'Radio Golf,' New Works by Schwartz & GrooveLily

TheatreWorks, the nationally-acclaimed theatre of Silicon Valley, announced its 2008-09 season. The company has once again snagged the rights to several news-making productions, and deepened its commitment to presenting new works, unveiling a vibrant season that will feature one World Premiere, two West Coast Premieres, and several Regional Premieres. In chronological order, the TheatreWorks 2008-09 season is as follows:

SNAPSHOTS
(West Coast Premiere)
Conceived by Michael Scheman and David Stern
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz
Book by David Stern
June 18-July 13, 2008 (press opening: June 21)
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts

TheatreWorks opens its 39th season with the dazzling West Coast Premiere of Snapshots, the latest musical from legendary Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Godspell, Pippin; film Enchanted). Snapshots reinvents the musical with the help of a photo album filled with memories. A bittersweet chronicle of a marriage that's lost its way, Snapshots combines some of Schwartz's most cherished hits, including "Popular" from Wicked, "Corner of the Sky" from Pippin, and "All Good Gifts" from Godspell, with new songs, including the title song "Snapshots" and "Making Good" (a song cut from Wicked during the rehearsal process), transforming the remnants of love into the musical of a lifetime. Book author David Stern and composer Stephen Schwartz will be in residence at TheatreWorks to work on Snapshots with TheatreWorks founding Artistic Director Robert Kelley, who will helm the newly-revised production.

DOUBT, A PARABLE
By John Patrick Shanley
July 16-August 10, 2008 (press opening: July 19)
Lucie Stern Theatre

TheatreWorks is excited to bring Silicon Valley its first look at John Patrick Shanley's gripping Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play Doubt. When she suspects a popular and dedicated priest of misconduct with a student, Sister Aloysius takes matters into her own hands. But the truth is clouded in complexity as doubt thwarts all assumptions in this engrossing mystery. A headline-hot story of suspicion and moral certainty, this riveting clash of conscience and conviction is one of the great plays of the decade. Doubt calls into question what to do when you're not sure.

GREY GARDENS
(First Post-Broadway Production)
Book by Doug Wright
Music by Scott Frankel
Lyrics by Michael Korie
Based on the film Grey Gardens by David Maysles,
Albert Maysles, Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer, and Susan Froemke
August 20-September 14, 2008 (press opening: August 23)
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts

TheatreWorks continues its 39th season with the first post-Broadway production of the scandalously delicious Grey Gardens. Adapted for the stage by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Doug Wright, this beguiling musical, winner of three Tony Awards and an Outer Critics Circle Award, brings to life a delightfully eccentric tale of fallen American royalty. Once among the brightest names in the pre-Camelot social register, Edith and Edie Bouvier Beale, aunt and cousin to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, became East Hampton's most notorious recluses. Chronicling their journey from giddy fortune in the 1940s to seclusion in the 1970s, this is an alternately hilarious and heartbreaking saga.

RADIO GOLF
(Regional Premiere)
By August Wilson
October 8-November 2, 2008 (press opening: October 11)
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts

TheatreWorks honors Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson by producing the Regional Premiere of Radio Golf. The final play in Wilson's cycle of 10 plays (this will be the fourth presented by TheatreWorks) examining the African-American experience in 20th Century America, Radio Golf, winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, is at once a hustling comedy-drama and an inspired elegy for a lost time. In Pittsburgh in the late 1990s, a successful entrepreneur aspires to become the city's first black mayor, but when the past begins to catch up with him, secrets are revealed that could undo everything. Radio Golf opened on Broadway in 2007 at the Cort Theatre. Contains mature language.

LONG STORY SHORT
(Co-World Premiere with City Theatre)
Book, Music, and Lyrics by Brendan Milburn and Valerie Vigoda
Based on the play An Infinite Ache by David Schulner
December 3-28, 2008 (press opening: December 6)
Lucie Stern Theatre

Love is in the air this holiday season as TheatreWorks continues its commitment to new works with the World Premiere of the roller-coaster romance Long Short Story (originally commissioned by City Theatre in Pittsburgh). Creators Brendan Milburn and Valerie Vigoda of the rock band GrooveLily return to TheatreWorks, where they developed and premiered their hip holiday hit Striking 12: The GrooveLily Holiday Show as part of the company's New Works Initiative in 2004 (the show went on to a successful Off-Broadway engagement). This charming new musical take on amore is as funny and fragile as love itself. Based on the play An Infinite Ache by David Schulner, Long Short Story examines the life-cycle of a relationship from first date through old age. It retraces a brief encounter between two 20-somethings which develops into a love affair that lasts a lifetime. This World Premiere was developed at TheatreWorks as part of the New Works Initiative in 2008 and is a co-production with City Theatre. Contains mature language.

TWENTIETH CENTURY
(Regional Premiere)
By Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
Based on a play by Charles Bruce Milholland
Adapted by Ken Ludwig
January 14-February 8, 2009 (press opening: January 17)
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts

All aboard for havoc and hilarity as TheatreWorks presents the Regional Premiere of Twentieth Century. Adapted by Tony Award-winning farceur Ken Ludwig, author of Lend Me a Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo, Broadway ballyhoo meets Hollywood hustle on the Twentieth Century Limited, the legendary locomotive that plays host to this classic comedy from the 1930s. This jaunty journey on the disorient express matches an on-the-outs impresario with a mercurial silver-screen starlet in a fast-paced, madcap battle of the sexes that's a send up of screwball comedy at its screwiest best.

IT AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT THE BLUES
(Regional Premiere)
By Charles Bevel, Lita Gaithers, Randal Myler, Ron Taylor, and Dan Wheetman
March 11-April 5, 2009 (press opening: March 14)
Lucie Stern Theatre

TheatreWorks proudly presents the Regional Premiere of the quadruple Tony-nominated musical It Ain't Nothin' But The Bludes. This sizzling, red-hot hit, which opened on Broadway in 1999, is a foot-stomping, hip-swaying, high-voltage journey in song. From African chants and Delta spirituals to the urban electricity of a Chicago nightclub and the twang of a country juke joint, this stirring retrospective of blues classics summons the soul of American music. It Ain't Nothin' But The Bludes is guaranteed to jar the floor and raise the roof.

DISTRACTED
(Regional Premiere)
By Lisa Loomer
April 1-26, 2009 (press opening: April 4)
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts

TheatreWorks closes its 39th season with the Regional Premiere of Distracted. From the playwright of Living Out and The Waiting Room, and the screenplay for the 1999 film Girl, Interrupted comes a provocative new work that explores the world of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and the unconventional path one mother takes to help her anxious son. Jesse's got problems and Mom needs to solve them. Is his diagnosis of ADD correct, or is he simply reacting to an over-stimulation of TV, computers, cell phones, and video games? At school, at home, this plugged-in kid is easily distracted and readily riled, but is he really any different than his parents, the neurotic neighbors, his clueless doctors, or everyone else living in the revved-up, wacked-out, webcast of modern life? Honest, insightful, and hilariously offbeat, Distracted is an up-to-the-minute dramedy texting for answers in a world too frazzled to text back.  Contains mature language.

TheatreWorks preview performances are at 8PM. Regular performances: Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7:30PM, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8PM, Sundays at 2PM and 7PM.

TheatreWorks at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Rd, Palo Alto; TheatreWorks at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View

For information, tickets ($21-$64), or subscriptions ($115-$410), the public can call 650-463-1960, 1-888-273-3752, or visit www.theatreworks.org.

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