From the classics (Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet) to the contemporary (2011 Pulitzer Prize winner Clybourne Park), to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! to The New Mel Brooks Musical: Young Frankenstein, Theatre UCF will present eight performances in its 2016-17 schedule.
Seven of the plays will be included in the department’s subscription series, and Oklahoma! will be presented as part of the third annual UCF Celebrates the Arts festival. All the plays will be at UCF except Oklahoma!, which will be at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.
The season will start June 2-11 with Almost, Maine, a series of vignettes about love – and lost love – during the middle of winter in this mythical town. The mostly comedic PG play will be directed by Mark Brotherton.
Other performances in the schedule are:
The World Goes ‘Round, a revue of the songbook from the multi-Tony-award-winning team of John Kander and Fred Ebb. The production filled with humor, romance, drama, and melody, is a nonstop hit parade of songs from Cabaret to Chicago, featuring “Mr. Cellophane,” “Maybe this Time,” “Cabaret,” “New York, New York” and others. Mayme Paul will direct the PG play June 23-July 2, and Aug. 25-28.
Clybourne Park, which also won the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play. The PG-13 play tells the story of white community leaders anxiously trying to stop the 1959 sale of a home to a black family. Fifty years later, the predominantly black neighborhood tries to hold its ground in the face of gentrification. David Reed will direct the PG-13 play Sept. 22-Oct. 2.
The New Mel Brooks Musical: Young Frankenstein, the comedy film adapted into a stage musical about the grandson of infamous Victor Frankenstein in Transylvania. The PG-13 performance will be directed Oct. 20-30 by Christopher Niess.
Cloud 9, set in British Colonial Africa and 1970s London. This comedy addresses race, gender, power, politics, family and sex. Julia Listengarten will direct the R-rated performance Nov. 10-20.
Romeo and Juliet, the Shakespeare classic adapted to the 1930s, where the Montague and Capulet families vie for control of the speakeasies, the distribution of alcohol and ownership of the American Dream. The PG play will be directed Feb. 16-26 by Be Boyd.
Hedda Gabler, the drama by Henrik Ibsen that’s survived more than a century. The PG-13 play is about revenge, manipulation, sexual repression, deceit and despair. The March 23-April 2 play will be directed by Kate Ingram.
Oklahoma!, which will be a collaboration by the UCF School of Performing Arts. The first Rodgers & Hammerstein play remains popular and set many of the rules of musical theater that are still followed today. The play is set in the west in the early 1900s, focusing on the romance of a handsome cowboy and winsome farm girl set in the high-spirited rivalry between the local farmers and cowboys. Earl D. Weaver will direct the play April 7-8.
Tickets are now available for the subscription-series performances, which will have new evening times at 7:30 p.m. and matinees at 2 p.m.
