SONG: Dr. John 8/2 & 3 @ City Winery

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STAGE: The Angel In The Trees

Now thru 7/31: The Production Company presents
The Angel in the Trees
A new play by Dan O'Brien
Directed by Mark Armstrong

Less than a year after moving to Lowden, a small town below the Mason-Dixon line, native New Yorker Madeline Singer encounters an unexplained phenomenon while walking through the woods. The Angels in the Trees is an evocative one-woman show about ghosts, God, and the American South. (source)

STAGE: Six by Tenn

Thru July 18: Playhouse Creatures Theatre Company kicks off its inaugural season with performances of six rarely produced short plays by Tennessee Williams.

The 6 shorts include The Municipal Abattoir, Mr. Paradise, Hello From Bertha, The Fat Man’s Wife, The Pink Bedroom, and Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen...

Until recently four of these plays (The Municipal Abattoir, Mr. Paradise, The Fat Man’s Wife, and The Pink Bedroom), were never-before-published. Written decades ago, only within the past 10 years have they made their debut in production.

Around 1950 Tennessee Williams wrote to Elia Kazan, “I don’t write with the effervescence that I used to. It comes harder. The peak of my virtuosity was in the one-act plays, some of which are like fire-crackers in a rope. Some of that came from sexual repression and loneliness which don’t exist anymore for very good reasons, and some of it came from plain youth and freshness.”

Where:
The Red Room
85 East 4th Street
Between 2nd & 3rd Avenue (Bowery)
Third Floor, No Wheelchair Access
Tickets: $20

(source)

SONG: The Blind Boys of Alabama 7/12, 14, 16 @ Lincoln Center

The Blind Boys of Alabama curate, host, and perform in three distinct programs developed specially for Festival audiences. Each night features a different musical journey with special artists from many walks of life, joining The Blind Boys in a celebration of what it means to perform music, in any genre, that is not only entertaining but moving. These concerts are inspired in part by the group's latest collaborative release Duets, which showcases the band's unique ability to blend with a wide variety of musical styles and artists. (source)

Head here for more info on what each night has to offer.

STAGE: Another Part of the Forest

Now thru July 11 (yes, it's been extended!) at The Theatre at St. Clement's:

ANOTHER PART OF THE FOREST

The first New York City revival in decades!

The shocking, rarely-seen “prequel” to The Little Foxes, Another Part of the Forest depicts the early days of the notorious Hubbard family. There’s the father, Marcus, the most-hated man in town; his emotionally crippled wife, Lavinia, who has secrets of her own; their wayward daughter, Regina, and two resentful sons. The eldest son, Benjamin, uncovers a long-buried secret. Threatening to reveal it, he attempts to blackmail his father into signing over the family fortune or face an angry lynch mob. (source)

STAGE: Can you Hear Their Voices

From Theatermania: Before the New Deal's Works Progress Administration and the Federal Theatre Project, there was Can You Hear Their Voices? (A Play of Our Time) written by Hallie Flanagan and Margaret Ellen Clifford. The play, based on the true story of a 1931 Arkansas drought, revealed a rural world of hunger and privation that was horribly neglected by government bureaucracy. With today's frequent and casual use of labels like "Communist" and "Socialist," Peculiar Works Project mines this landmark agitprop play to uncover how such words were interpreted in an earlier--yet remarkably similar--era. The news media constantly reminds us how our current economic situation is the worst "since the Great Depression;" Voices shines a spotlight on the root causes for radical political movements then and now.

Closes 6/27

STAGE: Sister Myotis's Bible Camp

Now thru July 4:

DOROTHY STRELSIN THEATRE

Sister Myotis’s Bible Camp

Being the head deaconess of an 80,000 member mega-church is not without its challenges. The faithful flocks need tending and the faithless… well, let's just say there's hope. Sister Myotis, Ima Lone, and Velma Needlemeyer will be in attendance to host the annual Women's Church Retreat in hopes of giving backsliders, whoremongers, and the “chronically mediocre” a second chance at salvation. (source)

STAGE: On The Levee

Set on a levee in Greenville, Mississippi, On the Levee is a play with music that revisits the flood of 1927, the worst in U.S. history. At the heart of the story are two fathers (a white cotton farmer and an African-American bootblack) and their sons. Based on a true story, On the Levee reaffirms the enduring spirit of hope in a time of great poverty and devastation. (source)

Now thru 7/10 @ The Duke on 42nd Street

STAGE: The Glass Menagerie

Two-time Tony Award® winner Judith Ivey stars as Amanda Wingfield in this daring interpretation of Tennessee Williams' classic drama, which comes to Roundabout Theatre Company following a critically-acclaimed run at the Long Wharf Theatre.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE is a gripping portrait of an American family struggling to maintain the fragile balance between a difficult past and an uncertain future. This powerful new version blurs the delicate line between playwright and narrator, infusing Tom Wingfield's (Patch Darragh) flashbacks with fresh meaning and bringing visceral truth to his tangled relationships with Laura (Keira Keeley), Amanda and Jim (Michael Mosley ).

Renowned for its vivid characters, exquisitely written dialogue and absorbing story, THE GLASS MENAGERIE has the capacity to move, to entrance and to dazzle. (source)

Playing now thru May 30 at Laura Pels Theatre.

STAGE: In The Heat Of The Night (closes 4/25)

It's 1962. A hot August night lies heavy over the small town of Argo, Alabama. A dead white man is discovered and the local police arrest a black stranger named Virgil Tibbs. The police discover that their prime suspect is in fact a homicide detective from California. As it happens, Tibbs becomes the racially tense community's single hope in solving a brutal murder that is turning up no witnesses, no motives, and no clues. (source)

Now thru 4/25 at 59E59.

STAGE: The Scottsboro Boys (closes 4/18)

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From the legendary songwriting team of KANDER & EBB (CABARET, CHICAGO, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN), THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS is a stirring new musical that explores the infamous 1930’s ‘Scottsboro Case’, in which a group of innocent African-American teenagers are falsely accused of a terrible crime — ultimately provoking a national outrage that sparked the American Civil Rights movement. (source)

STAGE: Looped (closes 4/11)

Based on a real event, LOOPED takes place in the summer of 1965, when an inebriated Tallulah Bankhead stumbles into a sound studio to rerecord (or ‘loop’) one line of dialogue for her last movie --Die, Die, My Darling. Ms. Bankhead was known for her wild partying and convention-defying exploits that surpassed even today’s celebrity bad girls. Given her intoxicated state and inability to loop the line properly, what ensues is an uproarious showdown between an uptight film editor, Danny Miller, and the outrageous legend.

She answered her front door naked. She went out in public without panties. She drank like a fish, popped pills, smoked like a chimney, cursed like a sailor, slept indiscriminately with men and women – and was eminently and shockingly quotable. Long before today’s misbehaving celebrities, there was acclaimed star of stage and screen, Tallulah Bankhead. (source)

STAGE: The Cherry Orchard (closes 4/10)

At Wings Theater on Christopher Street. LAST PERFORMANCE: 4/10 @ 2PM

Written by Anton Chekhov, Directed by Susanne Traub

Set in 1923 in Charleston, South Carolina, The Cherry Orchard brings to light the plight of the aristocracy as they see the demise of what was once the great Plantation era. The advent of the flapper age and the introduction of the Charleston dance craze provide clues to the changing moods of the future and the impending racial tensions. Miss Lillian returns home from Paris to find her estate is soon to be sold. Against the better judgement of their upstart neighbor Vernon, Lillian and her ineffective brother George do nothing to stop the impending sale, choosing to frollic around the estate watching the staff flirt and be flirted, her daughter start up a relationship with black rebel-rousing Peter, and everyone ignoring the loyal former slave Alexander. (source)

STAGE: Good Ol' Girls

GOOD OL’ GIRLS, a new musical written and adapted by Paul Ferguson, based on the stories of two prominent Southern authors, Lee Smith (The Last Girls) and Jill McCorkle (Going Away Shoes), with songs by Nashville hit-makers Matraca Berg (Reba McEntire, Dixie Chicks, Faith Hill) and Marshall Chapman (Jimmy Buffett, Wynonna, Olivia Newton-John). At the Black Box Theatre at The Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues) thru April 11. (source)

STAGE: Clothes For A Summer Hotel

Mr. Williams’ highly theatrical and evocative “Ghost play” about the tumultuous marriage and creative lives of Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald. CLOTHES FOR A SUMMER HOTEL, which opened in NYC on March 26, 1980, was Mr. Williams’ last Broadway production and has rarely been staged since. Filled with music and dance of the jazz age, the play fuses the past and the present in a theatrical tour-de-force as Zelda and Scott re-visit their youth and the ghosts of characters (including Ernest Hemingway) who helped shape their existence. (source)

Thru Feb 21 @ at the Hudson Guild Theatre
441 West 26th Street (Btw. 9th & 10th Aves.)

STAGE: The Miracle Worker

The Miracle Worker (starring Abigail Breslin) opens for previews tomorrow (2/12) at Circle in the Square Theatre on Broadway.

"Set in the American South in the 1880s, THE MIRACLE WORKER tells the story of real-life Medal of Freedom winner (and Tuscumbia AL native) Helen Keller, who suddenly lost her sight and hearing at the age of 19 months, and the extraordinary teacher who taught her to communicate with the world, Annie Sullivan."

STAGE: Black Angels Over Tuskegee

Now at St. Luke's Theatre: Black Angels Over Tuskegee is the story of the Tuskegee Airmen told in narrative of six men embarking upon a journey to become pilots in the United States Army Air Forces. The play explores their collective struggle with Jim Crow, their intelligence, patriotism, dreams of an inclusive fair society, and brotherhood. The play goes beyond the headlines of the popular stories of the Tuskegee Airmen and exposes the men who exhibited the courage to excel, in spite of all the overwhelming odds against them. (source)

STAGE: Phantom Killer

Now thru 2/14 @ Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex:

On a scorching hot Texas night in 1946, Luke parks on a deserted country road with his new wife Jessie. A Texas Ranger searches the same road hunting a serial killer. Before the three part ways, plans change, a deal is struck, a heart breaks, and everyone is guilty. (Source)

STAGE: The Man In Room 306

Now thru 2/14 at 59E59 Theaters:

The Man in Room 306 is a fictional account of the last night in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The story unfolds on the rainy, windswept evening of April 3, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

During these declining years of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King has returned to Memphis to lead a demonstration of striking, Black sanitation workers. This is the second march King will lead in the troubled "River City". The first ended in violence and the tragic shooting death of a sixteen year old black boy at the hands of white, Memphis police. For an anxious Dr. King the stakes couldn't be higher; if this next march ends in rioting, it may permanently damage the viability of nonviolence in the civil rights struggle and destroy his credibility as its symbolic leader. It is under these trying circumstances that Dr. King finds himself alone in Room 306, struggling with his past, anxious about his future, and coming to terms with his life.

Audiences are invited into the private world of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to catch a rare glimpse of the iconic figure as a man filled with life and hope, as well as the worries and burdens of his calling.

Written by and starring Craig Alan Edwards, The man in room 306 is an intimate, human portrait of Dr. King; a fictional glimpse into the private moments of history; into the passions and fears of an incredible man during an extraordinary time.

The Man in room 306 is proudly supported by the National Civil Rights Museum.

(Source)

STAGE: Babel Tower

Now thru tomorrow! (2/2) @ ArcLight Theater:

In BABEL TOWER the year is 1950. The isolated townspeople of Black Kettle, Texas, have come together to construct a mysterious tower. Jack, an ex-high school football star and gas station owner, stands alone as the voice of dissension. When he discovers that the eponymous tower might actually be a Russian missile, we find out how far he will go to save the town.(source)