The Threepenny Opera Revival, an Ethan Coen Comedy & More On Tap for Atlantic Theater’s 2013-2014 Season

Atlantic Theater Company will produce world premiere plays by Oscar winner Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men) and Tony nominee Stephen Adly Guirgis (The Motherf**ker with the Hat), an American premiere from Roy Williams (Sucker Punch) and a revival of the musical The Threepenny Opera as part of its 2013-14 off-Broadway season. Two additional productions, as well as dates and casting, will be announced at a later time.

David Cromer (Tribes, Really Really) directs the world premiere of Women or Nothing, the first full length play by Oscar-winning filmmaker Ethan Coen. The comedy kicks off the season at the Linda Gross Theatre August 28 and runs through October 6, with an opening night set for September 16.

Women or Nothing tells the story of two women so desperate to have a child that one of them will even sleep with a man. Who the man is, what he thinks is going on, what the women think about what he thinks, and what the mother of one of the women reveals about her own colorful past—it all defies belief. Why then does it all make sense?

Next up on the Mainstage is a revival of Bertolt Brecht’s dark musical The Threepenny Opera. Martha Clarke (The Garden of Earthly Delights) is set to direct and choreograph the third musical to ever be presented in Atlantic’s 30-year history. The Threepenny Opera will play in March/April of 2014. Exact dates to be announced.

Based on John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, Threepenny Opera follows the charismatic scoundrel Macheath and his criminal exploits in 19th century London. When Macheath marries Polly Peachum, the straight-laced daughter of powerful, miserly merchant JJ. Peachum, their unlikely union unleashes the chaos of manhunts, bribes, and imprisonment.

In May/June of 2014, Atlantic Theater Company presents a world premiere play from Tony nominee Stephen Adly Guirgis titled Between Riverside and Crazy. A director and exact production dates to follow.

Between Riverside and Crazy centers around an ex-cop and recent widower Walter Pops Washington and his ex-con son, Junior, who the Feds want busted, the landlord wants out and the Church wants back. When the struggle to hold on to one of the last great old rent stabilized apartments on Riverside Drive collides with their dozen broke house guests, a too-faithful Church lady and a gun-toting pimp, it seems Old Ways must finally yield to New Days.

Award-winning British playwright Roy Williams adapts Alan Sillitoe’s short story The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner for the stage at Atlantic Theater Company’s other off-Broadway theatre, Atlantic Stage 2, in January/February of 2014.

In The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Colin, with few prospects in life, finds himself in a prison school for criminal activity. He turns to long distance running as an escape, only to have the school exploit him for his talent, offering him a possible way out. Will he run his race for them, or for his independence?