Trinity Rep 2010-2011 season

Providence's Trinity Repertory Company has announced the lineup for its 47th season. Here's the 2010-2011 schedule along with the description from the news release:

Camelot
Lerner & Lowe
Sept. 10 - Oct. 10

King Arthur has everything – peace, prosperity and a happy marriage… but will the arrival of the handsome, brash Sir Lancelot change Camelot forever?

Absurd Person Singular
Alan Ayckbourn
Oct. 15 - Nov. 21

It’s a dark and stormy night – perfect for a festive holiday party! This hilarious comedy romp follows three married couples through three disastrous Christmas parties, as they drink, frolic, and fight their way to… holiday cheer?

It's A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play
Joe Landry
December

This unique stage adaptation is performed as a radio play, broadcast on Christmas Eve, 1946. Everyman George Bailey gets the chance to see what the world would be like if he’d never been born.

The Crucible
Arthur Miller
Feb. 4 - March 13, 2011

Fear stalks the people of Salem, Massachusetts. Is it the work of the devil? Or has hysteria, malice, and one young woman’s lust started a chain of events that will undo a whole community? (This is the centerpiece of the Project Discovery program that brings students to the theatre and actors into classrooms.)

Yellowman
Dael Orlandersmith
Feb. 25 - April 3, 2011

Growing up in a small South Carolina town, Eugene and Alma find friendship, solace, and even love in each other. But he is light-skinned, and she is dark. Can their love survive the weight of the world?

Steel Magnolias
Robert Harling
April 15 - May 15, 2011

On her wedding day, Shelby is a vision in pink – two lovely shades! Her mother and friends gather at Truvy’s Beauty Salon to prepare for the big day. Still, beauty, hairspray, and all the pink in the world can’t protect this young woman from what lies ahead.

The Completely Fictional - Utterly True - Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe
Stephen Thorne
May 6 - June 5, 2011

Edgar Allan Poe has been missing for seven days. And that’s just the beginning of a journey that leads him to the bizarre, the macabre, and the sublime. Where is Poe going? To hell, to heaven… and back. (Thorne is a member of the acting company and this is his first play.)

So, what excites me the most?

Well Camelot, definitely, since I love the movie and I've never seen the musical onstage. Trinity Rep's artistic director Curt Columbus says, "We will be stripping away all of the expected trappings of traditional knights and fair maidens to focus on the complicated love triangle set in a world of political intrigue.''

I'm looking forward to British playwright Alan Ayckbourn's farce Absurd Person Singular. He's become a favorite of mine since I saw The Norman Conquests on Broadway last summer. The three plays were hilarious and together, they were one of my favorite theatergoing experiences.

I'm intrigued by the idea of presenting It's A Wonderful Life as a 1940s radio play. As someone who's not really into the annual production of A Christmas Carol, it's nice to have an alternative.

And the subject of Dael Orlandersmith's Yellowman, a 2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist, sounds interesting. In the New York Times, Ben Brantley called the play "a hard and piercing drama about intraracial prejudice."