Marsha Mason and Miriam Silverman in All’s Well That Ends Well. Photograph by Scott Suchman.
Shakespeare Theatre Company announced the lineup for its 2012–13 season this morning, and seems to be cementing its reputation as a home for heavyweight literary works. Along with crowd-pleasing productions of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale, the schedule includes productions of Coriolanus and Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein running in repertory, thanks to a new series sponsored by the Robert H Smith Family Foundation.
The season opens, as usual, with the Shakespeare Theatre Free For All August 23 through September 9—this year, a production of All’s Well That Ends Well, directed by Jenny Lord (with original direction by STC’s Michael Kahn). September 13 through October 28 in the Lansburgh Theatre, Kahn directs Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector, a satire about bureaucracy and human folly adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher. Interestingly enough, last year the same play was adapted by John Musto and Mark Campbell into an opera, which debuted in April at Wolf Trap.
Ethan McSweeny (who directed The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing at STC last year) returns to helm a holiday-friendly production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Sidney Harman Hall November 15 through December 30. And Aaron Posner will then direct George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman in the Lansburgh Theatre January 24 through March 10.
The new Clarice Smith Repertory Series will sponsor plays in repertory for the next three years, and in 2013, the series will have a “hero/traitor” theme, offering Coriolanus and Wallenstein. The later is a new adaptation of Schiller’s masterpiece by former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, and explores the life of Albrecht von Wallenstein, one of Germany’s great generals. Michael Kahn will direct, while Studio Theatre artistic director David Muse takes on Coriolanus.
The season concludes with a production of The Winter’s Tale, directed by STC regular Rebecca Bayla Taichman and running May 9 through June 23 in the Lansburgh Theatre. For more details on the new season, visit Shakespeare Theatre Company’s website.
