Artistic Director Nicholas Martin has announced the casting for the next three productions of the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s 2010 Season: Our Town by Thornton Wilder (The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker) playing the Main Stage July 28 – August 8, Fifth of July by Lanford Wilson (Talley’s Folly, The Hot l Baltimore) playing the Main Stage August 11 – 22, and the world premiere of After the Revolution by Amy Herzog (The Wendy Play, Willing) on the Nikos Stage July 21 – August 1.
Our Town
On the Main Stage, Artistic Director Nicholas Martin directs Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece examination of small town America, Our Town. Set not far from the Festival’s Berkshire home in the fictional Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, Our Town explores the beauty in the seemingly mundane lives of people in a small town.
Martin assembles a cast of Festival family to appear in his last directing turn as Artistic Director. The cast features Becky Ann Baker (All My Sons, Assassins), Dylan Baker (God of Carnage, Revolutionary Road), Kevin Cahoon (The Wedding Singer), Nancy E. Carroll (Present Laughter), Jessica Hecht (Tony Award nomination for A View from the Bridge, Brighton Beach Memoirs), Brie Larson (“The United States of Tara”), Bryce Pinkham (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, The Orphan’s Home Cycle), Will Rogers (When the Rain Stops Falling, From Up Here), Graham Rowat (Guys and Dolls, Lovemusik), John Rubinstein (Pippin, Tony Award for Children of a Lesser God), Campbell Scott (Rodger Dodger, The Spanish Prisoner), and Jon Patrick Walker (High Fidelity, The Secret Lives of Dentists)
The design team for Our Town includes scenic design by David Korins, costume design by Gabriel Berry, lighting design by Kenneth Posner, and sound design by Drew Levy. Michael Friedman composed the music for this production. The production stage manager is Gregory T. Livoti.
Fifth of July
Also on the Main Stage, Tony Award nominee Terry Kinney (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, reasons to be pretty) directs Lanford Wilson’s gentle comic drama, Fifth of July, from his beloved Talley trilogy. As friends and family gather to remember a lost loved one, a group of thirty-something prodigals from the rebellious post-Vietnam generation return to their rural Missouri home, finding themselves older and wiser, yet still searching. Long-buried rivalries and burning secrets reignite on a late summer evening as this motley tribe struggles to adapt to the changes wrought in their lives.
Noah Bean
Update as of 8/3/10: Cast changes for “Fifth of July.” Noah Bean has joined the WTF cast of Fifth of July as Jed, while Anson Mount has left the lineup. Shane McRae will now play Ken Talley, Jr.
The cast features David Wilson Barnes (Becky Shaw, The Lieutenant of Inishmore), Danny Deferrari (The Confidence Man), Kally Duling (Back in Pictures), Elizabeth Franz (Tony Award for Death of a Salesman, The Miracle Worker), Shane McRae (“Four Kings,” Take Me Out), Anson Mount (Crossroads, Corpus Christi), Jennifer Mudge (The Philanthropist, Reckless), and Kellie Overbey (The Coast of Utopia, The Savannah Disputation).
The design team for Fifth of July includes scenic design by David Gallo, costume design by Sarah J. Holden, lighting design by David Weiner, and sound design by Obadiah Eaves. The production stage manager is Brian Meister.
After the Revolution
On the Nikos Stage, Carolyn Cantor (Essential Self Defense, In a Dark Dark House,) directs the world premiere production of Amy Herzog’s After the Revolution, which was developed as part of the 2009 WTF Fellowship Project. It’s 1999, and three generations of a radical leftist family meet in New York to celebrate the law school graduation of Emma, the family’s youngest torchbearer. A public revelation about her late grandfather, a victim of the blacklist, sends Emma reeling as the family begins to fracture. Shaken and betrayed, she must weigh her fierce politics and family loyalty to decide if the ends really justify the means.
The cast features Mark Blum (Twelve Angry Men, A Thousand Clowns), Peter Friedman (Ragtime, Circle Mirror Transformation), David Margulies (“The Sopranos,” Wonderful Town), Katharine Powell (The Farnsworth Invention), Lois Smith (“True Blood,” Buried Child), Elliot Villar (Coraline, The Brothers Size), and Mare Winningham (St. Elmo’s Fire, “Grey’s Anatomy”).
The design team for After the Revolution includes scenic design by Clint Ramos, costume design by Kaye Voyce, lighting design by Ben Stanton, and sound design and composition by Fitz Patton. The production stage manager is Hannah Cohen.
Casting for the final production of Williamstown’s 2010 season, The Last Goodbye, will be announced shortly.
Ticket Information
Tickets for the 2010 Williamstown Theatre Festival season can be purchased online at www.wtfestival.org and by phone at (413) 597-3400 or in person at the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance, 1000 Main St (Route 2), Williamstown, MA 02167.
