A number of shows have joined the previously announced summer production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music at Barrington Stage Company. The 2022 season will feature two Tony Award-winning musicals, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, four world premieres, and a beloved absurdist piece of 20th century theatre.
“I’m tremendously excited to be producing four outstanding, provocative new works as well as some of the great classics of the 20th century in my final season,” says BSC Artistic Director Julianne Boyd, who is set to retire. “It has been a glorious 27 years, and I look forward to a summer of superlative theatre to fill the magical Berkshires nights.”
The Boyd-Quinson Stage will open with a new production of Ain’t Misbehavin’, The Fats Waller Musical Show (June 16–July 9), which will be choreographed and directed by BSC Associate Artist Jeffrey L. Page. A production to be helmed by Camille A. Brown was originally scheduled for 2020 but canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Next up will be Nilo Cruz’s 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Anna in the Tropics (July 16-30), directed by Elena Araoz. The play was also set for the 2020 season prior to the shutdown. Following that is the tribute production of A Little Night Music (August 6-28). Boyd will direct the musical, with choreography by Robert La Fosse and music direction by Darren R. Cohen.
The Boyd-Quinson season concludes with the world premiere of All of Me (September 21–October 9), a new play by Laura Winters, directed by Ashley Brooke Monroe. Winters won the Burman New Play Award for this work, under its former title, Just the Melody. It’s a romantic coming-of-age story about a boy and girl, both people who use wheelchairs and use text-to-speech devices to communicate, and whose love brings them together while others attempt to pull them apart.
Over at the St. Germain Stage, which has been closed since 2019, the season opens with Brent Askari’s Andy Warhol in Iran (June 2-25), featuring a fictionalized account of artist Andy Warhol’s famed 1976 visit to Tehran.
ABCD (July 1-23), written by May Treuhaft-Ali and directed by Daniel Bryant, examines the inequities in the American public school system, as it follows an underserved school on the verge of shutdown, and an elite magnet program in the same city.
The Youth Theatre then takes to the stage in The Supadupa Kid (July 29–August 13), following the adventures of a Black teenage superhero. With book and lyrics by Sukari Jones and music by Joel Waggoner and direction by NJ Agwuna, the show is based on local author Ty Allan Jackson’s popular children’s book series of the same name. The first three shows are all world premieres.
The season will conclude with a revival of Waiting for Godot (August 19–September 4), one of the great absurdist classics of 20th century theatre by Samuel Beckett, in a new atmospheric production directed by Joe Calarco (BSC’s Sister Sorry; A Doll’s House, Part 2; Breaking the Code).
Casting and additional details on the 2022 BSC season, including gala, concerts, and streamed and staged readings, will be announced in coming weeks.
Glynis Johns in the original Broadway production of A Little Night Music
