TheatreWorks New Milford Has Selected The Shows For Its 2006 Season

NEW MILFORD — Following a tremendous 2005 season – its 39th – TheatreWorks New Milford has selected five shows for its 2006 season. TheatreWorks will once again build on its commitment to presenting quality dramas, musicals and comedies to area audiences.

“As anyone – actor, artist or audience – who has ever been to a TheatreWorks performance knows, true theater comes to life, not only on stage or backstage, but in that bond between those in the light and those in the dark,” said TheatreWorks artistic director Bill Hughes. “In hard or difficult times, culture is too often relegated to a back burner, when in truth that is the moment we most need to celebrate it. TheatreWorks will always celebrate the power, passion and the pride of live theater. It is who and what we are”

Opening the season on February 17 will be Jason Robert Brown’s two-person musical The Last Five Years, a beautiful and fascinating production that chronicles a young couple’s romance in a new and exciting way: her story starts at the end of their relationship, his begins on the day they met.

Only in the middle of the story — at their wedding — do they come together in time. Funny and uplifting, the show captures some of the most heartbreaking and universally felt moments of modern romance.

The production will run on weekends, February 17 to March 18.

In the spring will be Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero. In this viciously funny modern morality tale set in a Manhattan high-rise, which will run April 28 to May 27, laid back and wisecracking Jeff is the new security guard aimlessly ambling through life. But when his boss’ brother is implicated in a brutal murder, the investigation leads right into the lobby and Jeff must make the elusive right choice between loyalty and truth.

In the summer, from July 14 until August 12, TheatreWorks will present one of Broadway’s hottest musical comedies: Urinetown.

In a future Gotham-like city, private toilets are banned. A monolithic and malevolent company profits from a 20-year drought by charging admission for one of humanity’s most basic needs — a public john. But amid the people, a hero plots a revolution to lead them all to freedom.

Urinetown triumphed as Broadway’s unexpected phenomenon, winning the 2001 Tony Award’s Triple Crown for Best Direction, Best Book and Best Music & Lyrics.

In the fall, running September 22 to October 21, playwright Jeffery Hatcher’s Compleat Female Stage Beauty examines the struggles of a Shakespearian actor, once celebrated for his genius at playing female roles, who suddenly finds himself out of work when women are allowed to take the stage.

“Anyone who enjoyed Shakespeare in Love [is] sure to find this story of an artist’s moving search for his identity irresistible,” said TheatreWorks president Richard Pettibone.

For the season finale, TheatreWorks will end with Anthony Neilson’s holiday farce The Lying Kind, December 1-31.

Hapless British Bobbies Blunt and Gobbel have one last duty to fulfill before they can finish their Christmas Eve shift: inform the sweet old couple at No. 58 of some terrible news. But Blunt and Gobbel didn’t join the force to ruin people’s lives.

Once inside the house, their total ineptitude and humane inability to tell the truth leads to an endless — and absolutely hilarious — series of misunderstandings.

Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm with generally a single Sunday matinee per run at 2 pm. The Lying Kind has three matinees scheduled.

Tickets are $17.50 for plays and $25 for musicals. Season subscriptions, which include all five productions, are $85. For more information visit the theatre’s website, www.TheatreWorks.us. Information, tickets and subscriptions are also available by calling the box office at 860-350-6863.

TheatreWorks is an award-winning, volunteer non-Equity theatre company located at 5 Brookside Avenue, just off Route 202 in New Milford.