CRITIC’S PICK
BRANTLEY Mr. Fish is providing a stark illumination that allows those homesteaders we once thought were so wholesome no place to hide, even when it’s pitch dark. What’s so thrilling about this exposure of what lies beneath is that you feel it was always there, waiting to be excavated.
GREEN Astonishingly, not a word has been added to Hammerstein’s book, nor any major liberties taken with the Rodgers and Hammerstein songs. Yet the whole thing feels much more intimate because of the context.
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OKLAHOMA! CASTING ANNOUNCEMENT
Rebecca Naomi Jones and Ali Stroker join Oklahoma! returning cast members Damon Daunno, Patrick Vaill, Mary Testa, Mallory Portnoy, Mitch Tebo, and James Davis
Rebecca Naomi Jones (Fire in Dreamland at The Public Theater) is set to play Laurey in the Bard SummerScape production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! to be re-mounted at St. Ann’s Warehouse beginning in September. Ali Stroker, who recently made her Broadway debut in Deaf West’s Spring Awakening, will star as Ado Annie.
Directed by New York-based director Daniel Fish, the acclaimed production returns to the stage for the first time since playing to sold-out audiences at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in 2015.
The production’s original cast members Damon Daunno (Curly), Patrick Vaill (Jud Fry), Mary Testa (Aunt Eller), Mallory Portnoy (Gertie Cummings), Mitch Tebo (Ado Annie’s father, Andrew Carnes) and James Davis (Will Parker), will return to the musical. New cast members, in addition to Rebecca Naomi Jones and Ali Stroker, will include Michael Nathanson (The Punisher, The Knick) as Ali Hakim, Anthony Cason as Cord Elam, Will Mann as Mike, and Gabrielle Hamilton as Lead Dancer.
Photo: Brigitte Lacombe
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Written by Good Chance Theatre Founders and Artistic Directors Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, and Directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, The Jungle Brings to Life the Powerful, Short-Lived, Self-Governing Society of the Jungle, a Refugee Camp in Northern France
“This extraordinary play…is vivid and complex in its portrayal of human resilience in the face of humanitarian catastrophe.” — The Guardian
St. Ann’s Warehouse will present the U.S. Premiere of The Jungle, the immensely acclaimed Good Chance Theatre co-production with the National Theatreand Young Vic. Currently opening a five-month run at London’s Playhouse Theatre on the West End, The Jungle comes to St. Ann’s beginning December 4, 2018. The play is a vital remembrance of the now bulldozed camp in Calais, France known as the Jungle, where thousands of refugees who had escaped drought, war, and strife-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East waited for their “good chance” passage to Britain. The production has been energizing an international conversation around immigration, borders, and the lived experiences of refugees ever since its momentous first performances exploded at the Young Vic theatre last December.
Photo: David Sandison
Off the heals of announcing the cast for its remount of the Bard SummerScape production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! this fall, St. Ann’s Warehouse has added two new productions to its upcoming season.
Joining the 2018–2019 lineup are The Wooster Group’s production of The B-Side: “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,” A Record Album Interpretation, starring co-creator Eric Berryman; and Wayward Productions’ Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, adapted and directed by Enda Walsh, and starring Cillian Murphy.
Just in time for the 75th anniversary of its wartime premiere, Oklahoma! resurfaces as a fresh and daring new work with a seven-piece band playing all new arrangements of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s beloved classics. Set in the Territory of Oklahoma on the verge of becoming a state, director Daniel Fish’s timely production upends the sunny romance between a farmer and a cowpoke with “what has always been just below the surface of this magnificent musical” – the darker psychological truths of a community circling the wagons against a reviled outsider.
Photo by Cory Weaver from Bard SumerScape, 2015
