The Huntington Theatre Company will open its 29th season with the great American stage comedy, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's You Can't Take It With You, pending the conclusion of negotiations for a transfer to Broadway. Tony Award-winning director Anna Shapiro (August: Osage County) will direct the production, which is scheduled to run at the Huntington's mainstage, the Boston University Theatre from September 24 through October 24 before opening on Broadway in November 2010 at a theatre to be announced. The Huntington will also produce the Pulitzer Prize-winning Off Broadway smash Ruined by the acclaimed Lynn Nottage (Intimate Apparel, Fabulation) at the B.U. Theatre in winter 2011 (dates to be announced).
Called "a spontaneous piece of hilarity" by The New York Times, You Can't Take It With You depicts the colorful, freethinking Sycamore family and the merry mayhem that ensues when their daughter's fiancé brings his conservative, straight-laced parents to the Sycamore residence for dinner on the wrong night. Literal and figurative fireworks erupt over the course of the evening. You Can't Take it With You will continue the Huntington's multi-year exploration of American comedy that begins in the 2009-2010 Season with Gina Gionfriddo's Pulitzer Prize finalist Becky Shaw (March 5 - April 4, 2010).
Anna Shapiro won the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for August: Osage County by Tracey Letts, having directed the play's premiere at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre and winning the Jefferson Award for Best Direction. Her numerous other credits include Iron (Manhattan Theatre Club), Jon Robin Baitz's A Fair Country (Huntington Theatre Company), and Bruce Norris' The Pain and the Itch (Steppenwolf Theatre).
You Can't Take it With You follows over one dozen Huntington productions that have subsequently played Broadway, including the current acclaimed revival of Present Laughter, seven plays by August Wilson, Hedda Gabler with Kate Burton, Simon Gray's Butley with Nathan Lane, Theresa Rebeck's Mauritius, and the Tony Award-winning Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps.
Tony Award-winning Broadway producers Elizabeth Ireland McCann (Hair, Edward Albee's The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?, Copenhagen, A View from the Bridge - 1998 revival, and the Huntington's production of Butley) and Joey Parnes (Hair, Equus, Passing Strange, Butley) produce for Broadway.
Casting and further production information for You Can't Take It With You is to be announced.
Lynn Nottage's Ruined, a gripping and exciting drama, tells the story of Mama Nadi, a savvy Congolese business woman who knows how to survive in the midst of a civil war: don't take sides. She sells beers and girls to any man who'll leave his gun at the door. The good-time atmosphere of Mama Nadi's canteen and her sharp wits can't always protect her and her girls from the atrocities afflicted on them, but their courage, humor, and hope survive. Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The Off Broadway production of Ruined extended multiple times and earned numerous awards, including the OBIE Award for Best New American Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Variety wrote that Nottage "has crafted a work that speaks eloquently of the monstrous acts bred by war, and of the courage and compromises required to survive them." The Chicago Tribune raved, "Sincere, passionate, courageous and acutely argued, Ruined is a remarkable theatrical accomplishment."
Playwright Lynn Nottage is also the author of Intimate Apparel; Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; and Las Meninas. Her work has been produced and developed and theatres both nationally and internationally including Manhattan Theatre Club, the Goodman Theatre, the Roundabout Theatre Company, Playwrights Horizons, and The Tricycle Theatre in London, among many others. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for Ruined, a 2007 MacArthur Genius Award, and an OBIE Award for Playwriting. She is a graduate oF Brown University, the Yale School of Drama where she is currently a visiting lecturer, and New Dramatists.
Liesl Tommy will direct Ruined. Her past projects include Ruined (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Lydia R. Diamond's Stick Fly (CATF), and The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson (The Public Theater and The Sundance Institute). She is the recipient of an NEA/TCG Directors Grant and the New York Theatre Workshop Casting/Directing Fellowship, and is a member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and the Lincoln Center Director's Lab.
"I am thrilled to announce the beginnings of our 2010-2011 Season: You Can't Take It With You is one of the most dazzling comedies in the cannon, and Ruined is one of the most compelling and important dramas written in the last 20 years. Groundbreaking playwright Lynn Nottage, razor-witted director Anna Shapiro, comedy masters Kaufman and Hart, and rising-star Liesl Tommy - it's a crackling start to what promises to be a barn-burner of a season. I look forward to sharing more exciting news about our plans in the coming weeks."
Additional information about the Huntington's 2010-2011 Season, including dates, casting, and further production information for Ruined is to be announced.
ABOUT THE HUNTINGTON
The Huntington Theatre Company is Boston's largest and most popular theatre company, hosting 64 Tony Award-winning artists, garnering 36 Elliot Norton Awards, and sending over a dozen shows to Broadway since its founding in 1982. In July 2008, Peter Dubois became the Huntington's third artistic leader and works in partnership with longtime Managing Director Michael Maso. In residence at and in partnership with Boston University, the Huntington is renowned for presenting seven outstanding productions each season, created by world-class artists and the most promising emerging talent, and reaching an annual audience of over 130,000. The company has premiered plays by Pulitzer Prize, Academy Award, and Tony Award-winning luminaries such as August Wilson and Tom Stoppard, as well as rising local literary stars such as Melinda Lopez and Ronan Noone. The Huntington has transferred more productions to Broadway than any other theatre in Boston, including the Broadway hit and Tony Award-winner Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. In 2004, the Huntington opened the state-of-the-art Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, which includes 370-seat and 200-seat theatres to support the company's new works activities and to complement the company's 890-seat, Broadway-style main stage, the Boston University Theatre. The Huntington is a national leader in the development and support of new plays, producing more than 50 New England, American, or world premieres in its 27-year history. The Huntington's nationally-recognized education programs have served more than 200,000 middle school and high school students in individual and group settings and community programs bring theatre to the Deaf and blind communities, the elderly, and other underserved populations in the Greater Boston area.
