Sunday, September 05, 1999
Cincinnati's stage struck
Fall season packed with premieres and classics
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The local theater 1999-2000 season will explode Wednesday with the simultaneous openings of two Broadway hits. Both are Cincinnati premieres.
Ragtime, the splendid musical adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's superb, panoramic novel of America at the turn of this century, opens the Fifth Third Bank Broadway Series. This year's Tony Award-winning best play Side Man (by Warren Leight) makes its national regional theater debut at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati.
Thursday, seriously funny Much Ado About Nothing at Playhouse in the Park will be the first of a trio of plays by Shakespeare to be performed regionally in September.
Later this month, Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival will open its season with The Tempest,followed by the highly regarded Alabama Shakespeare Festival's As You Like It at Dayton's Victoria Theatre.
What audiences will see is more productions and a significant percentage of new work — at least 25 regional premieres with some theaters still to announce their complete schedules.
“It says a lot about the city and a lot about artists sticking to it,” ETC producing artistic director D. Lynn Meyers says. “There's nothing easier than quitting.”
• Playhouse in the Park's box office is rocketing, with sales almost 9 percent ahead of this point last year. If you're thinking about buying a ticket to Wit or Spunk, call now.
• Cincinnati Shakespeare is increasing its play series from six to seven. Downtown Theatre Classics also has added a show, with five productions at the Aronoff's Jarson-Kaplan Theater in 1999-2000.
• Three of the four freshman companies that debuted at the Aronoff in 1998-99 are alive and well, although not necessarily using the Aronoff.
While Stage First, which specializes in world classics, is increasing its residency from four plays to seven in the Fifth Third Theater. Ovation Theatre will divide its four-play season between the Fifth Third and The Carnegie in Covington.
New Edgecliff has scheduled its next production for January at the Fifth Third, but it's also experimenting with the idea of calling Xavier University home. (It had a successful run of All in the Timing there last month.) Its spring show may be in Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival's space.
Second Chance Productions, which also debuted in 1998-99, didn't survive its first season.
Smart scheduling
• There's a lot of smart scheduling. Cincinnati will get a double helping of hot Irish playwright Martin McDonagh and his explorations of domestic dysfunction. Playhouse in the Park will offer the Cincinnati premiere of The Beauty Queen of Leenane.ETC schedules the playwright's The Cripple of Inishmaan to dovetail with the Playhouse engagement.
Cincinnati Public Theatre, which had a hit in May with Love! Valour! Compassion! will counterprogram for the holidays. While just about everybody else will be offering family fare, it's promising the regional premiere of edgy cabaret act Six Women with Brain Death (or Expiring Minds Want to Know) in the Fifth Third.
• When College-Conservatory of Music unveils its new campus this fall, it will include a new studio theater that promises to be a factor on the local theater scene starting in early 2000.
• For the first time in memory there was an August theater calendar beyond summer stock musicals. Several of the nine productions were by theater companies so small they're not even on the radar screen. Three are promising to return during the September-June season.
• The new League of Cincinnati Theatres will make its presence known with a Web site and call boards at participating theaters offering information about plays throughout the region.
Could this be the start of something big?
“I don't know. I don't know,” offers Cincinnati Shakespeare artistic director Jasson Minadakis. “Whenever theater goes through the roof, it seems to coincide with a Shakespeare resurgence, but I don't know that Shakespeare is necessarily leading the way here.
“Does it matter that the sports teams had been awful for years? That downtown is being renovated and that it's safer, with more restaurants, and with more restaurants staying open after shows?” he ruminates. “I don't know.
“At national conferences all people are talking about are the problems, but attendance has obviously gone up here. I don't know. I can't figure it out.”
What we're seeing, suggests Ed Stern, producing artistic director of Playhouse in the Park, “is not the same people going out more often but an honest-to-goodness expansion of the audience. All our audiences are younger, more diverse.
“Maybe what this season means is that people are deciding they can have a good time with plays that are good.”
Started with Playhouse
Ms. Meyers traces the burgeoning theater scene directly to Mr. Stern's tenure at the Playhouse.
“When the Playhouse got (artistically and financially) healthy and started producing at the level it's producing now, it started being noticed across the country and Cincinnati started noticing, too.”
Things were a lot different just five years ago.
“Cincinnati Shakespeare couldn't have gotten its own space then, we were at death's door,” Ms. Meyers says.
Now, she says, “There's all this energy” throughout the cultural community. She points specifically to the coming Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Arts, as the new Contemporary Arts Center will be called.
“That has to have an effect,” she says. “People are growing, moving up, moving toward professionalism. That's so exciting.
“You know, once Cincinnati gets an idea in its head, it runs with it, and the idea now seems to be the arts.”
Cincinnati's stage struck
Critic's choices, week by week
Lavish 'Ragtime' portrait of an era
Cast of players on theater scene
Fireworks define four generations of Rozzis
Riverfest crowd guess pure fantasy
Can we feather our nests with Beanie Babies?
Bullies feed school violence
Parents teach ways to deflect tormentors
Tips for parents, students
Educators, parents speak out
Heimlich quits charter school board
Inside the house that Mike built
Voters scarce in local races
Wasps feeling feisty, not festive
Welfare to work: Success in human terms
Broadway supporters reduce debt
Bully sheriff has met his match
Democrats eye state Senate seat
Old-fashioned challenge to road checkpoints on target
Belated memorial at Kent State
Rhodes still troubled by youths' protests
Family might be movin' out for a piece of quiet
'Sabrina' star moves her career every witch way
Broadcasters group honors WEBN as 'station of year'
Dating doc 'Soup' server
GET TO IT
Radtke's 'Dream' catches eyes at fest
Telluride films focus on life, human content
Apartment building fire leaves families homeless
Bank to accept tax payments
Court to decide term limits
Disabled workers part of report
Drivers might be caught on camera
Florence Y'all fest distills fun
Golf tourney will aid organ-donation efforts
Justice center won't displace businesses
Magistrate follows up on domestic violence
Miami offers outdoor pursuits
Monroe CityFest offers crafts, food, fun
Old Timers Day draws Rabbit Hash revelers
Photographer of Reds dies
Republicans salivating over council possibilities
Soccer league asks parents to zip their lips
TRISTATE DIGEST
