Kennedy Center slates McNally trio Cate Blanchett set for 'Streetcar' By PAUL HARRIS
WASHINGTON -- Three plays by Terrence McNally, including one world preem, and Cate Blanchett as Blanche DuBois are among the offerings of the 2009-10 season at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
The three McNally outings -- including his latest play, "Golden Age" -- are presented as a spring fest similar to the tributes staged at the Kennedy Center in previous seasons to Stephen Sondheim and Tennessee Williams.
Blanchett, meanwhile, comes to D.C. in an October engagement for Sydney Theater Company's production of "A Streetcar Named Desire." Liv Ullman will direct the Tennessee Williams drama, also slated for a stint at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
McNally's "Golden Age," about backstage events at the Theatre-Italien in Paris during the 1835 premiere of Vincenzo Bellini's opera "I Puritani," is a co-production with the Philadelphia Theater Company. Show, whose director remains to be determined, is supported by a $50,000 grant from the Kennedy Center's Fund for New American Plays.
Billed as McNally's "Nights at the Opera," the center's three-play fest of the scribe's work also will include "Master Class," McNally's homage to Maria Callas to be staged by Walter Bobbie, and "The Lisbon Traviata," directed by Christopher Ashley. The three productions will run concurrently on separate Kennedy Center stages in March and April 2010.
The center's upcoming theater sked also will include tour stops of Steppenwolf Theater's "August: Osage County" in the Eisenhower Theater in November; "Young Frankenstein" as its holiday offering at the Opera House; George Stevens Jr.'s play "Thurgood," featuring Laurence Fishburne, in the Eisenhower in June; and a summertime visit by Disney's "Mary Poppins" at the Opera House.
In addition, the third season of its Barbara Cook Spotlight concert series features gigs by Cheyenne Jackson; Christine Ebersole; Karen Akers; Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell; and Jessica Molaskey and John Pizzarelli.
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