Westport Country Playhouse Announces 2016 Season

Michael Urie in the Off-Broadway production of Buyer & Cellar. Photo: © Sandra Coudert

Westport Country Playhouse's 2016 season will feature two Tony Award-winning plays in repertory, an Off-Broadway hit, a new thriller by a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, a comedy a re-imagined musical by Lerner and Loewe. 

The 2016 season will begin in what Artistic Director Mark Lamos calls “a new way for us to launch an exciting new season.”  In the first production slot, May 3 to 29, two Tony Award-winning plays will be staged in repertory, with each play alternating daily:  Art by Yasmin Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton; and Red by John Logan.  Both will be directed by Lamos.  Each of the plays is about art:  making it, owning it, the anguish of creating it, and the ache of believing in it.  

The recent Off-Broadway comedy hit Buyer and Cellar by Jonathan Tolins, which won a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show, is about a young, out-of-work actor who winds up working for Barbra Streisand in the mall she built in her Malibu mansion. It will play June 14 – July 2.

Another recent Off-Broadway piece, The Invisible Hand, is a new thriller by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, author of Broadway’s Disgraced. When an American futures trader finds himself kidnapped and held hostage in Pakistan, he knows the only way to get home is to do what he does best:  play the market like his life depends on it.  David Kennedy, Playhouse associate artistic director, will direct. The play will run July 19 – Aug. 6. 

The comedy, What the Butler Saw, offering a little blackmail, and a lot of innuendo, will play Aug. 23 – Sept. 10.  It is written by Joe Orton, and directed by John Tillinger, who helmed a recent production in Los Angeles.

Finally, Camelot will run Oct. 4 – 22.  With book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Frederick Loewe, and directed by Lamos, the classic love triangle of King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot will be a re-imagined version with script by David Lee (TV’s “Frasier” and “Cheers”). 

For more information and to buy subscriptions: www.westportplayhouse.org; 203-227-4177; 1-888-927-7529.