Williamstown Season Includes Anything Goes and The Opposite of Sex

The Main Stage season will open with the revival of Anything Goes directed by WTF Artistic Director Roger Rees. Anything Goes has music and lyrics by Cole Porter and an original book by Guy Bolton, P.G. Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The musical originally premiered on Broadway in 1934 with Ethel Merman in the lead role of the nightclub singer, Reno Sweeney. The plot concerns the hijinks of passengers sailing on the S.S. American from New York to England. The group includes a gangster, a wealthy debutante and her mother, a nightclub singer and a wealthy New York businessman and his stowaway assistant. It features the numbers "I Get a Kick Out Of You" and "You're the Top." The show is scheduled to run at Williamstown from July 5 through July 16.

Next up on the Main Stage is Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth, directed by David Jones and running from July 19 through July 30. Sweet Bird of Youth centers on Chance Wayne, a guilt-ridden young man who, in the attempt to try to establish his own acting career, becomes the companion of a 50-something movie star, Princess Kosmonopolis. The play first opened on Broadway in 1959 with Paul Newman as Wayne and Geraldine Page as Kosmonopolis. The actors reprised their roles in the 1962 film version of the play.

From August 2 through August 13, the Main Stage will play host to a new production of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Will Frears will direct the famous tale of star-crossed lovers from feuding families.

Rees and Rick Elice then credited as Eric Elice wrote Double Double, which Rees will direct on the Main Stage from August 16 through August 27. The play centers on a woman whose husband has just died only a few weeks before he was due to inherit a £1 million trust fund. She picks up a down-on-his-luck man and asks him to impersonate her late husband so she can collect the money.

The Nikos Stage season will begin with Cusi Cram's Lucy and the Conquest, running July 12 through July 23. The play centers on Lucy Santiago, star of Hunter Nevins: Beach Detective, who has worn her last teeny bikini. She storms off the set and back to her home in Bolivia. But something's wrong at grandma's house and after a hit on the head, Hunter returns to save the day. Suzanne Agins will direct.

Following Lucy and the Conquest, the Nikos stage will have A Nervous Smile by recently deceased playwright John Belluso. In A Nervous Smile, a young girl with cerebral palsy is locked in the prison of her own body. Will her parents do the unthinkable, and abandon her to escape the bruising reality of her care? The show, directed by Maria Mileaf, is scheduled to run at Williamstown from July 26 through August 6.

The last season offering on the Nikos stage will be The Opposite of Sex, directed by Robert Jess Roth and running from August 9 through August 20. The Opposite of Sex features music and lyrics by Douglas J. Cohen and a book by Roth and Cohen based on Don Roos' screenplay for the 1998 film of the same name. The Opposite of Sex is about a 16-year-old girl with a dead stepfather and an emotionally unstable mother. She decides to make a break for it, moves in with her gay half-brother and seduces his hot boyfriend. And that's only the beginning. The show premiered at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco in the fall of 2004. It was rumored for a Broadway berth, which never materialized.

In addition to the announced shows, Williamstown will offer some free theater, a cabaret series, readings and some special events.