Olney Theatre Center Announces 2012 Season Line Up
Olney Theatre Center, the award-winning, year-round arts and entertainment destination, is proud to announce the line up for the 2012 season, which is filled with a diverse array of family favorites, traditional dramas and unique adaptations.
The 2012 season brings three fun-loving and classical musicals as well as three dramatic productions to its stage. You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, opens the season on February 22 and runs to March 18, 2012. Charles Schulz's classic Peanuts gang takes a leap from the newspaper page to the stage in this lively, family-friendly musical. Directed and choreographed by Stephen Nachamie, this heart-warming production is bound to charm audiences, young and old alike.
Spring brings an adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps that The New York Times calls "Absurdly enjoyable," from April 18 through May 14, 2012. Directed by Olney Theatre Center's Associate Artistic Director Clay Hopper, who directed last year's hit Farragut North, this play focuses on Richard Hannay, a suave, somewhat bored Englishman who naively agrees to date a mysterious woman he meets at the theatre. He unexpectedly finds himself in a world of spies and adventures. With four actors playing over 150 characters, the show is bound to keep audiences glued to their seats as this classic Hitchcock comedic thriller takes to the stage.
The summer season at Olney Theatre Center begins with the thriller Sleuth from June 13 to July 12, 2012. Olney Theatre Center's Artistic Director Jim Petosa directs this tale of a wealthy mystery novelist who invites his wife's lover to his elegant, yet isolated country estate. A bizarre game of cat and mouse ensues and spirals into a complex duel of wits and power plays. The Chicago Theatre Blog calls Sleuth, "a first-rate cut-throat thriller."
The kitschy, musical comedy Little Shop of Horrors rounds out the summer season from August 1 to August 26, 2012. Based on a 1960's movie of the same name, the story follows the antics of Seymour Krelborn, a bedraggled florist shop worker, who is desperately in love with a fellow employee, but needs all the help he can get. When a mysterious plant shows up at his doorstep and helps him catch the eye of his secret crush, Audrey, he'll give it anything to stay alive. Filled with upbeat music and directed by Mark Waldrop, who most recently directed the Olney Theatre Center hit musicals Annie and The Sound of Music, Little Shop of Horrors is sure to delight audiences.
Closing out the 2012 season are two diverse shows - an area premiere and a musical fairytale. Over the Tavern is what The New York Times quotes as "...a staged sitcom with a dash of pretend blasphemy...it has real heart." Over the Tavern, opening September 25 and running through October 21, 2012, is about the Pazinski family - who live over their bar in Buffalo, New York with their four mischievous children. One of the children, Rudy, constantly questions the Baltimore Catechism and the virtues of the Roman Catholic faith because he believes we were put on earth "to have fun." Directed by Olney Theatre Center Associate Artistic Director John Going, this lively comedy brings smiles to those who relate to the dysfunction of family life as they deal with their concerns about faith and sex and family relations.
Finally, a musical tale of magical proportions, Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, Cinderella closes out Olney Theatre Center's season from November 14 through December 30, 2012. The DC Theatre Scene raves that "Rodgers and Hammerstein's treatment of this rags to riches fable offers a more grown-up perspective than that of Disney's animated film..." Under the direction of Bobby Smith, director of last year's hit musical Grease, Cinderella will enchant and delight audiences of all ages with some of the DC-area's best local talent.