THEATER: Talent shows

Hedda Gabler

Photo: Arno Declair

Heartbreak House

The Roundabout Theatre Company revives George Bernard Shaw’s moody post-WWI work about romantic complications on a highly allegorical English estate. Swoosie Kurtz, Philip Bosco and Lily Rabe star. Previews begin Sept 15; opens Oct 11 at the American Airlines Theatre.

Songs of Dragons Flying to Heaven

Ethnic theater gets a sick twist thanks to resentfully Korean-American dramatist Young Jean Lee. The playwright picks apart Asian and other stereotypes. Sept 21–Oct 14
at HERE.

Evil Dead: The Musical

Someone has finally turned Sam Raimi’s gory kitsch classic movie about zombie girlfriends and chain-saw prosthetics into a musical.

Previews begin Oct 2; opens Nov 1 at New World Stages.

Butley

Nathan Lane dusts off his tweed jacket and English accent for Simon Gray’s affectionate 1972 portrait of an iconoclastic, irascible literature professor with an unusual romantic life. Previews begin Oct 5; opens Oct 25 at the Booth Theatre.

The Clean House

Sarah Ruhl’s quirky, acclaimed drama concerns a haughty doctor (Blair Brown), her joke-writing cleaning lady (Vanessa Aspillaga) and plenty of scrubbing. Previews
begin Oct 5; opens Oct 30 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

Mary Poppins

Disney adds another property to the Main Stem with the flying-nanny classic, featuring a score by the Sherman brothers, who were responsible for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Previews begin Oct 14; opens Nov 16 at the New Amsterdam Theatre.

The Sunset Limited

Novelist Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses) gets off the farm to examine race and faith in this New York–set drama. Austin Pendleton and Freeman Coffey star in the production, direct from Chicago’s Steppenwolf. Oct 24–Nov 19 at 59E59.

Photos, from left: Michael Brosilow; T. Charles Erickson; Joan Marcus

The Little Dog Laughed

Julie White delivers a knockout comic performance in Douglas Carter Beane’s sassy tale about being fabulous and closeted in Hollywood. Previews begin Oct 26; opens Nov 13 at the Cort Theatre.

Company

Expanding his unique brand of multitasking musicals, British director John Doyle (Sweeney Todd) stages the 1970 Sondheim classic with actors who play instruments while singing and acting. Previews begin Oct 30; opens Nov 29 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Hedda Gabler

Iconoclastic German director Thomas Ostermeier (Nora) sets Ibsen’s bourgeois tragedy in a sleek, modern apartment (not unlike Ivo van Hove’s version two years ago at New York Theatre Workshop). Part of 2006’s Next Wave Festival. Nov 28–Dec 2 at BAM Harvey Theater.—David Cote

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