Classic Stage Company Sets Starry New Season

Classic Stage Company has announced plans for its 2004-2005 season. The lineup will include Johann van Saaz's Death and the Ploughman, a festival of readings featuring Kate Mulgrew and David Strathairn, Samuel Beckett's Happy Days with Lea DeLaria and David Greenspan and Pierre Marivaux's The False Servant with F. Murray Abraham.

Death and the Ploughman, directed by Anne Bogart and translated by Michael West, will kick-off the season, beginning performances in early November and playing through mid-December. The play centers on a simple ploughman, maddened by the loss of his wife, who accosts Death and forces him to explain his purpose.

While Death and the Ploughman is running, CSC will present the return of last season's First Look Festival--a program of one-night only staged readings of rarely seen classics, performed by notable actors. This season will focus on the masterworks of German classical theater, with staged readings of Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart, starring Mulgrew and directed by Erica Schmidt, and Johan Wolfgang Goethe's Urfaust featuring Strathairn and direction by Michael Sexton. The First Look Festival will be presented on the last two Mondays in November.

In February, CSC will present the Worth Street Theatre Company production of Happy Days with DeLaria and Greenspan. Happy Days centers on Winnie, an eternal optimist facing the harsh realities of life with a smile, endless chatter and an enduring cheerfulness. In the first act, Winnie is buried up to her waist in a mound of dirt, but she uses her hands to continue semi-normal activity, like brushing her teeth and hair. In the second act, she is buried up to her neck. Her predicament is never explained during her monologues. The only other character in the play is her husband Willie, who only rarely appears or interjects, but is there throughout.

The False Servant, translated by Kathleen Tolan and directed by Brian Kulick, will star Abraham. Lust, avarice and a healthy dose of cross-dressing are all on display in this sly 18th century romp where a young girl dresses as a man to learn more about her husband to be. What she discovers bends everything from gender to our most cherished notions of love. The False Servant will be performed from late March until early May.

The 2004-2005 season will also include the launch of a new free event next April, Monday Night Hamlet, co-presented by CSC and The Shakespeare Society, which will take audiences behind the scenes for Monday night open rehearsals of Hamlet.