Williamstown Theatre Festival Announces 2005 Season

Williamstown Theatre Festival has announced its 2005 season, which is the first under the leadership of new artistic director Roger Rees. The Main Stage season will begin on July 6 and include Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, Tom Stoppard's On the Razzle and William Inge's Bus Stop. The Nikos Stage "First Works" season will feature new plays by Etan Frankel, Lucy Prebble and Oni Faida Lampley.

Lady Windermere's Fan centers on Lady Margaret Windermere who, determined not to trust her husband when circumstances suggest he's been unfaithful, resolves to leave him flat. But the true nature of her husband's relationship with the "other woman" is very different from what young Margaret assumes it to be. Directed by Moisés Kaufman, the play will run from July 6 through July 17.

Top Girls centers on Marlene and the discussion that arises during a dinner party she throws to celebrate her promotion to managing director of Top Girls employment agency. Her dinner guests are five prominent women from the past: Isabella Bird the adventurous traveler, Lady Nijo the medieval Japanese courtesan who became a Buddhist nun, Dull Gret who as Dulle Griet in a Bruegel painting led a crowd of women on a charge through hell, Pope Joan the transvestite early female pope and Patient Griselda the obedient wife out of Chaucer. Together they discuss women's place in society and Marlene's own internal battles. Directed by Jo Bonney, the show is slated to play from July 20 through July 31.

While their boss is away, two store clerks have madcap adventures filled with mistaken identities and malapropisms in On the Razzle, which will run from August 3 through August 14. Freely adapted from Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy's 19th century farce, Einen Fux will er sich machen which also inspired Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker, the staging of On the Razzle will be helmed by David Jones.

Cherie's a hard-up nightclub singer. Bo's a good ol' cowboy. And when a snowstorm leaves their bus stranded somewhere between Kansas City and Topeka, they spend the night discovering truths and uncovering lies in Bus Stop. The production, directed by Will Frears, is scheduled to run August 17 through August 28.

Frankel's play Create Fate is the first Nikos play of the 2005 season, running from July 13 through July 24. It centers on Nathan Penney, who has lots of everything: a bank account worth millions, a super-sized waistline and a multitude of vintage muscle cars. So why shouldn't he hire a private eye to get him some sugar and spice that's extra nice? Why shouldn't Nathan Penney go out and buy himself the love of his life, the girl of his dreams? Why shouldn't Nathan Penney, master of his domain, create his own fate?

Prebble's The Sugar Syndrome will be directed by Maria Mileaf and run on the Nikos stage from July 27 through August 7. In the play, 17-year-old Dani surfs Internet chat rooms searching for someone who is honest and direct. What she finds is a man twice her age who thinks she is an 11-year-old boy.

In Lampley's Tough Titty, Angela confronts her childhood ideas about God and goodness when she is diagnosed with breast cancer, trying to stay married, raise two small sons and endure poisonous treatments. The play, directed by Charles Randolph-Wright, is scheduled to run on the Nikos stage from August 10 through August 21.

The 2005 Williamstown season marks the debut of WTF's new performance venues in the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance at Williams College. The Festival's Main Stage will now be housed in a new 550-seat multi-level auditorium while the renovated Adams Memorial Theatre will be the new home of the Nikos Stage. In addition to the season offerings, the Festival will include the popular late-night cabaret, Free Theatre, Greylock Theatre Project and many other activities.