Corddry Brothers, Seldes and Mays Highlight New Williamstown Season
The Williamstown Theatre Festival has announced its 55th annual season. Highlights include real-life brothers Nate and Rob Corddry in Sam Shepard’s True West and a starry roster of performers that includes Tony winners Jefferson Mays and Marian Seldes.
The Main Stage season will kick off with A.R. Gurney’s Children, which will run from July 1 through July 12. Directed by John Tillinger, the piece is set in a large summer home on an island off the coast of Massachusetts. When an estranged brother’s return and a mother’s impending marriage recall painful memories of their father’s death, seething arguments reignite one family’s struggle with its tragic past and uncertain future.
The next offering on the Main Stage is Shepard’s True West, directed by Daniel Goldstein. This Pulitzer Prize-winning play is an explosive exploration of family rivalry as two very different brothers attempt to sell Hollywood their version of the great American Western. Played by real-life siblings Nate Corddry Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, United States of Tara and Rob Corddry The Daily Show, the show runs from July 15 through July 26
Tony-nominated stage and screen actor Dylan Baker November, Mauritius, Revolutionary Road will direct George Kelly’s The Torch-Bearers on the Main Stage. Running from July 29 to August 9, the cast includes his wife, Becky Ann Baker All My Sons, Assassins, and Tony Award winner Marian Seldes A Delicate Balance, Deathtrap. The play is a side-splitting 1920s farce in which a troupe of amateur actors rehearse and perform a show-stopping new play—or try to with all their might.
The final WTF Main Stage production will be Simon Gray’s Quartermaine’s Terms, running from August 12 through August 23. Tony-nominated director Maria Aitken will helm the show, with a cast that includes Tony nominee Mary Beth Hurt Top Girls, A Delicate Balance, Simon Jones Blithe Spirit, Waiting in the Wings and Tony winner Jefferson Mays I Am My Own Wife, Journey’s End. This 1960s comedy follows an endearingly eccentric group of English teachers in Cambridge whose insatiable quest for knowledge has masked their secret longings for passion, romance, and true happiness.
Williamstown’s smaller Nikos Stage will feature the world premiere of Jonathan Marc Sherman’s Knickerbocker, directed by WTF Artistic Director Nicholas Martin from July 8 to July 19; Noah Haidle’s What Is The Cause Of Thunder?, directed by Justin Waldman from July 22 to August 2; and Melinda Lopez’s Caroline In Jersey, directed by Amanda Charlton, from August 5 to 16.
Additional performers and full creative teams for the 2009 Williamstown Theatre Festival season will be announced at a later date.
