NYTW’s 2010-2011 season looks like a good one, with Ivo Van Hove taking on Lillian Hellman, the return of last year’s awesome Three Pianos and a co-production with Playwrights Horizons of The Shaggs, a musical about The Shaggs. I saw it a few years back at the NYMTF and it was really, really great. Looking forward to seeing this new version in the spring.

The Little Foxes
Written by Lillian Hellman
Directed by Ivo Van Hove
Previews September 10; opens September 21; closes October 31
The notoriously provocative director Ivo van Hove returns to NYTW to take on The Little Foxes, one of Lillian Hellman’s most well-known plays, starring his frequent collaborator Elizabeth Marvel. A startlingly original play (also known from the Hollywood film starring Bette Davis), The Little Foxes is a timely study of greed, dishonesty, and one generation’s unstoppable drive to ruthlessly exploit the resources of a previous generation. This is the sixth collaboration between NYTW and Flemish director Ivo van Hove—past collaborations have included Eugene O’Neill’s More Stately Mansions, Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Molière’s The Misanthrope.

The cast of The Little Foxes is Tina Benko, Marton Csokas, Sanjit De Silva, Lynda Gravatt, Elizabeth Marvel, Cristin Milioti, Thomas Jay Ryan, Grieg Sargeant, Christopher Evan Welch, and Nick Westrate.

Three Pianos
Written, arranged, and performed by Rick Burkhardt, Alec Duffy, and Dave Malloy
Directed by Rachel Chavkin
Opens December 19
Three Pianos—the hit music-theater event that wowed audiences and critics alike in its sold-out run at the Ontological Theater in March—is a theatrical explosion of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise song cycle. Filled with fantastical touches and inventive arrangements, Three Pianos is a colorful and imaginative evening of chaos that explores Schubert’s music, life, and times. Written, arranged, and performed by Rick Burkhardt (Nonsense Company), Alec Duffy (Hoi Polloi) and Dave Malloy (Banana Bag & Bodice), the play is set in a rustic cabin on a blustery winter night where three friends—each manning a piano—lead the audience through their respective passions for Winterreise, Schubert’s famous song cycle on winter heartbreak – performing the songs, grappling with fundamental questions about the nature of music, slipping into the skins of Schubert and friends during one of their famous “Schubertiads,” and drinking way too much. Compositional mayhem, shifting rivalries, and some unfortunate butchery of the German language ensue.

Peter and the Starcatcher
Written by Rick Elice
Directed by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers
Based upon the novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
February – March 2011

Rick Elice, co-writer of the Tony® Award-winning Jersey Boys and The Addams Family, along with actor/director/author Roger Rees, probably best known for his Tony® Award-winning performance in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, and OBIE Award-winning director Alex Timbers, founder and artistic director of Les Freres Corbusier and director of the highly-acclaimed Public Theater production of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, have created an imaginative new play based on the New York Times best-selling novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, Peter and the Starcatcher. In it a company of twelve actors plays some 50 characters—all on a journey to answer the century-old question: How did Peter become The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up?

The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World
Book by Joy Gregory; music by Gunnar Madsen; lyrics by Ms. Gregory and Mr. Madsen; story by Ms. Gregory, Mr. Madsen and John Langs.
Directed by John Langs
Spring 2011
A co-production with Playwrights Horizons presented at Playwrights Horizons

Set in Fremont, New Hampshire in the early ’70s, The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World is based on the true story of a working class dad who has a vision of rock n’ roll destiny for his three talentless daughters, convinced they’re his family’s one-way ticket out of hardship and obscurity. But the girls have ideas of their own – and as their father’s ambition turns to obsession, the price of familial obligation becomes all too clear.