Phoenix new season announced

Today, the Phoenix Theatre announced its lineup of 2009/2010 productions which, true-to-Phoenix form, looks to take adventurous theatergoers into untested and unfamilair territory.

And it’s going to be doing it at a cheaper price. The Phoenix is dropping a regular ticket down to $20 and expanding $15 Duke Energy CheapSeats performances to include Sundays as well as Thursdays.

The season opens with the Midwest Premier of Blair Singer’s male bonding dramady “The Most Damaging Wound,” continues with Donald Margulies’ fanciful “Shipwrecked! An Entertainment, The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As told by himself),” where a big part of the pleasure should come from seeing how the Phoenix design team faces the show’s many challenges.

The holiday’s will bring another edition of “A Very Phoenix Xmas,” and the New Year launches two more Midwest premieres, Alan Brody’s “The Housewives of Mannheim” and Sharr White’s academic family in-fighting drama “Sunlight.”

You may not have heard of playwright Steven Dietz, but with a play being staged at the Indiana Repertory Theatre and another simultaniously at the Phoenix, you will soon. The Phoenix will offer Dietz’s “Yankee Tavern” in April, describing it as Alfred Hitchcock meets Oliver Stone.

As classes are winding down at school’s in late May, the Phoenix will take us back to high school in Steven Karam’s “Speech and Debate,” in which a trio of loners take on a school’s scandels. It’s an intense piece, requiring a trio of talented, age-appropriate, actors. 

The highest profile show of the season is the Neil LaBute’s “Reasons to be Pretty,” which recently closed on Broadway (and which I reviewed in the IBJ). Start preparing now for the blistering verbal battle that launches the show.

The Phoenix season also includes three specials, which the theater is presenting rather than producing. Look for the return of comedy duo Dos Fallopia, a one-man world premiere from Ricardo Melendez, and Terre Haute by Edmund White and, perhaps of most interest, the drama “Terre Haute,” based on prison interviews with death-row inmate Timothy McVeigh.

Your thoughts?