The Barrington Stage Company recently unveiled its 2015 season lineup and from the looks of things, the Pittsfield-based theater is offering up some unique shows.Kicking off in June, the company’s 21st season features a jumble of genres and topics including a Civil War comedy, the autobiographical tale of playwright Neil Simon and children’s favorite Shrek.
Co-founder and artistic director Julianne Boyd says there’s no connecting theme this year and she’s just fine with that.
“Storytelling in theater really interests me,” Boyd said. “When you get a group of characters who each want something different and you follow them through two hours its very, very exciting as you see all the pieces fit together and you see this great denouement at the end of a play or musical. That’s exciting to me.”
Simon’s Lost in Yonkers will be onstage from July 16 to August 1. The Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play draws upon Simon’s boyhood experience living with his grandmother, a story Boyd says people can relate to.
“It’s done funny and very wittily,” Boyd described. “Of course this stern grandmother isn’t so stern when you find out what her background is, but as a teenage boy when you look at a really stern grandmother, a really formidable women, you go ‘I’m really scared’ until they’re not.”
The performance Boyd says audiences will find most unusual is Butler, a Civil War comedy recalling the experiences of Major General Benjamin Butler, who would go on to become Massachusetts 33rd governor. It’s believed Butler aided in the freeing of thousands of runaway slaves.
“The slave is very clever and shrewd and the slave goes against this Major Butler,” Boyd explained. “In the midst of it all is this very uptight West Point adjutant who only wants to go by the rules. This major general was appointed two weeks before by [President] Abraham Lincoln. True story. Abraham Lincoln owed this man a favor and he made him a major general and he had no experience as a military officer.”
Other shows include Shrek The Musical, Man of La Mancha and a new adaptation of His Girl Friday that combines the film of the same name and the play The Front Page about Chicago newspapermen at the start of World War II. The season wraps up with the October showing of Veils, which follows an African American Muslim woman studying abroad in Egypt during the Arab Spring. Here’s Boyd.
“It’s a play about us hopefully understanding the Muslim religion better particularly from the point of view of women,” Boyd said. “I always try to do something each year that really elicits a great discussion and I think it’s about time we talk about this.”
The season is the company’s 10th since moving production to Pittsfield from Mt. Everett Regional High School about 30 miles south in Sheffield. Annual attendance has grown to more than 55,000 with 80 percent coming from Massachusetts. Former Governor Deval Patrick celebrated state funding for upgrades at the company’s two Pittsfield stages and its 20th season by attending a show this past July.
“It’s an important part of economy,” Patrick said. “It’s an important part of our quality of life. If we want to grow jobs and opportunity we’ve got to play to our strengths and the concentration of cultural facilities is one of our strengths.”
Season passes are currently available while single show tickets go on sale March 4th.
