The King and Christiane Noll Share a Dance, Olympia Dukakis Gets Courageous & More Cross-Country Highlights

Broadway.com’s Countrywide Guide is your destination for the best in theatrical offerings around the country. This week, we go from Eastern Long Island to California with five fabulous theater picks, including a revival of The King and I, Olympia Dukakis taking on Bertolt Brecht's most famous heroine and Shrek in Chicago.


SAG HARBOR, NY
Peter Scolari & Jackie Hoffman Tickle Funny Bones
Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone! A comedy in Sag Harbor! Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum focuses on a slave's efforts to win his freedom by helping his master to win the love of a woman. Broadway vets Peter Scolari, Jackie Hoffman and Conrad John Schuck star in Marcia Milgrom Dodge's Bay Street Theatre production of the farcical tuner, which runs through August 31.


LENOX, MA
Olympia Dukakis is One Tough Mother Courage
Set during the Thirty Years’ War, Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children centers on one of theater's most tragic heroines. Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis stars as a woman torn between her role as a mother and an entrepreneur in a production that co-stars John Douglas Thompson (Broadway bound in A Time to Kill) as the Cook. The provocative epic is playing at Shakespeare & Company's Tina Packer Playhouse through August 25.


CHICAGO, IL
Shrek the Musical Blows Into the Windy City
Chicago Shakespeare Theater's annual summer treat for families is a new 75-minute version of Shrek the Musical! Based on the Oscar-winning animated movie, Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire's tuner brings the hilarious story of everyone's favorite green ogre to life on stage. This acclaimed staging of Shrek plays through September 1, starring Michael Aaron Lindner as the title character and Summer Naomi Smart as the spunky Princess Fiona.


SACRAMENTO, CA
Christiane Noll Whistles a Happy Tune
Tony nominee Christiane Noll is tackling one of musical theater's most beloved classic roles as widowed schoolteacher Anna Leonowens in Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I. But hurry: This breathtaking show is playing nine performances only at Sacramento’s Music Circus, through August 11. Joining Noll are Broadway vets Paul Nakauchi as the King, Telly Leung as Lun Tha and Diane Phelan as Tuptim. Sounds like "Something Wonderful" to us!


MADISON, NJ
Tovarich's Duchess & Dashing Prince Hide Out in Jersey
Ousted from their homeland by a revolution, a royal Russian couple find themselves poor and living in Paris in Jacques Deval's Tovarich. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert E. Sherwood's 1936 adaptation of the bizarre romance stars Jon Barker as Prince Mikail Alexandrovitch Ouratieff and Broadway alum Carly Street as Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna. The Bonnie J. Monte-helmed Tovarich will run at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey through August 25.