Summer festivals: All the country’s a stage

last updated 8 January 2015

For most of the year, theater thrives primarily in urban centers. Come June, however, outdoor festivals and summer stock raise their curtains across the country.

Berkshire Theater Festival

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One of the oldest and most respected theater festivals in the county, Berkshire adds to its 80-year tradition this year with a trio of powerful plays. It kicked off with Harold Pinter’s sinister comedy The Caretaker (through June 28), about two brothers whose relationship is tested when a homeless man enters their lives. George Bernard Shaw’s Candida (through July 5)—performed during Berkshire’s inaugural season—gets a new production, in which Anders Cato directs Tony-nominated British actress Jayne Atkinson. Cato also directs Samuel Beckett’s existential tragicomedy Waiting for Godot (July 23–Aug. 23).

The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park festival has been a fixture of New York summers for a half-century. This year Hamlet, starring Andre Braugher, Sam Waterston, and Michael Stuhlbarg, runs through June 29. Later in the summer, in place of the customary second offering by the Bard, organizers have planned a 40th-anniversary production of Hair, which originally premiered at the Public’s downtown home. Diane Paulus directs a cast of 26, headed by Spring Awakening’s Jonathan Groff. No phone sales. Free tickets distributed beginning at 1 p.m. each day.

Though health problems forced Paul Newman to step down from his slated directorial debut of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (Oct. 7), his shoes have been ably filled by Tony-winning director Mark Lamos. Artistic directors Joanne Woodward and Anne Keefe have put together a diverse season that includes the Office-like comedy Scramble! (July 8–26)—starring Saturday Night Live alum Rachel Dratch—and Karoline Leach’s dark thriller Tryst (Aug. 5–23), about a con man in Edwardian England who marries wealthy women and then murders them on the honeymoons.

To call this a Shakespeare festival can be a bit misleading: Only four of the 11 featured plays—A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Coriolanus, and The Comedy of Errors—were penned by the Bard. Other fare during the festival’s sprawling six months includes Luis Alfaro’s comedy Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, about a suburban woman’s struggle with appetites (July 1-Nov. 22), and Jeff Whitty’s The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler (through Nov. 1), in which Ibsen’s suicidal heroine awakens to an afterlife among a pantheon of tragic female fictional characters.

The third largest repertory festival in North America is built around the works of George Bernard Shaw. This year’s offerings from the Irish playwright include Getting Married (through Nov. 1), a meditation on matrimony that carries on where an earlier Shaw play, The Philanderer, left off. Mrs. Warren’s Profession (July 6–Nov. 1) focuses on the contentious relationship between a genteel daughter and her prostitute mother. If Shaw isn’t your bag, other options include J.B. Priestley’s brainy mystery An Inspector Calls (through Nov. 2), and the seldom-produced The Stepmother (through Oct. 4) by Githa Sowerby, written in 1924 but making its North American premiere here.

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