Early stages

What's around the corner on the local Rialto

by Carolyn Clay

Scrooge and the Sugar Plum Fairy have folded their tents. But fear not, stageoholics. In addition to the snazzy touring production of Chicago at the Colonial and the American Repertory Theatre's intriguing pairings of punk immortals and bereft moms in The Bacchae and Peter Pan and Wendy, which continue through January, there are many post-holiday treats in store -- everything from Shakespeare's Shrew to Nixon's Nixon.

* The Shaughraun (Huntington Theatre Company, January 9 through February 8). Irish playwright and impresario Dion Boucicault's play had its Boston premiere in 1875, with Maurice Barrymore in the company. Inspired by the Fenian insurrection of 1866, the large-scale work is directed here by Larry Carpenter, whose staging recreates the stagecraft and heroic tradition of 19th-century theater. Postmodernists need not apply.

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* Nixon's Nixon (Merrimack Repertory Theatre, January 9 through 31). Most people think of Richard Milhaus Nixon as more of a bag of expletives deleted than a bundle of laughs. But the New York Times found Russell Lees's political satire -- a fictional recreation of the meeting between Nixon and Henry Kissinger on the night before Nixon's resignation -- "blissfully funny and entertaining." David G. Kent helms the New England premiere.

* The Monogamist (Coyote Theatre, January 9 through February 1). "A bit of Molière by way of Joe Orton" is the intriguing description of this comedy by Christopher Kyle, which takes off when a middle-aged poet finds his wife in bed with one of her college students and purports to skewer Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers alike.

* Miss Saigon (Wang Theatre, January 14 through February 28). Madame Butterfly meets Les Misèrables in this second megahit musical by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, the French team who put Jean Valjean on the Broadway map. This is just the second Boston touch-down for Miss Saigon, which centers on the doomed romance of an American soldier and a young Vietnamese woman at the time of the fall of Saigon (and on its famous helicopter).

* Valley Song (New Repertory Theatre, January 14 through February 15). This marks the Greater Boston premiere of Athol Fugard's first post-apartheid drama, about "the conflict between generations in a country emerging from a dark past into a new future." Brandeis prof and Charles Playhouse founding director Michael Murray directs.

* Enter the Actress (American Repertory Theatre, January 19). Illustrious actress Claire Bloom brings her latest one-woman creation to town, an evening "with three centuries of leading ladies." Takes one to play one -- much less many. Here Bloom "brings a cast of stars to life with monologues, anecdotes, and just a hint of scandal."

* The Irish . . . And How They Got That Way! (Wilbur Theatre, January 20 through February 8). Before there was Angela's Ashes, Pulitzer Prize winner Frank McCourt penned this musical revue billed as "a humorous, irreverent musical chronicling centuries of Irish heritage, particularly over the past century in America." Charlotte Moore and Ciaran O'Reilly helm the Irish Repertory Theatre production.

* The Taming of the Shrew (American Repertory Theatre, in repertory January 30 through March 21). Andrei Serban, who helmed such stellar ART offerings as The Three Sisters and The King Stag, returns after an eight-year absence to direct Shakespeare's politically incorrect foray into combative love. Don Reilly, the cerebrally swashbuckling Jack Tanner of last season's Man and Superman, plays Petruchio.

* Peer Gynt (Trinity Repertory Company, January 30 through March 8). Fred Sullivan Jr. and Timothy Crowe play the protagonist of Ibsen's epic, poetic drama, in a new adaptation by playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) and Stephen Müller, who also directs.

* Porcelain (SpeakEasy Stage Company, February 5 through 21). Elliot Norton Award-winning director Steve Maler helms Chay Yew's play, which focuses on the disenfranchised part of the gay community via the story of a 19-year-old Asian man who confesses to shooting his lover.

* Old, Wicked Songs (Jewish Theatre of New England, February 19 through March 22). The Boston premiere of John Marans's Off Broadway hit about a disillusioned American pianist who goes to Vienna to recover his love of music. The songs of Robert Schumann are woven into the work, which explores the relationship between the young pianist and his crotchety old Viennese voice teacher.

* Portia Coughlan (Súgán Theatre Company, February 26 through March 14). Carmel O'Reilly directs the North American premiere of Marina Carr's play, which had its world premiere by Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1996. Set against the brooding backdrop of small-town Ireland, the play travels back and forth in time to tell the story of an unhappily married woman who seeks solace in soulless affairs.

* In the Jungle of Cities (American Repertory Theatre, in repertory February 20 through March 14). Experimental director Robert Woodruff, who staged a memorable Baal at Trinity Rep, helms Brecht's Chicago-set "meditation on the ideals and harsh realities of the American Dream," in a new translation by Paul Schmidt.

* Molly Sweeney (Nora Theatre Company at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre, March 6 through 29). The Boston premiere of Brian Friel's lyrical drama in which a contented blind woman, her husband, and the renowned eye surgeon who operates to restore her vision weigh in on her conversion to -- and clash with -- sightedness.

* And in dance. The BankBoston Celebrity Series has already sold out the January 17 appearance by the Marcus Schulkind Dance Company. But look for Ballet Hispanico (February 6, 7, and 8 at the Emerson Majestic Theatre) with choreography set to music by, among others, Gloria Estefan and Selena; Twyla Tharp presenting three new works by her new company (March 26 through 29 at the Shubert Theatre), with music drawn variously from Shaker hymns, Philip Glass, and "lounge"; and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (April 14 through 19 at the Wang Theatre). Call 482-6661. And World Music has peppered its extensive spring music line-up with dance-related events: Boston Rhythm, featuring Ibrahima Camara, first among many (at the Somerville Theatre on February 1); the Zimbabwean Black Ufolosi (at the Somerville Theatre on February 22); and Brazil's Balé Folcólorico da Bahia, who brought down the house last year, return (March 12 through 15 at the Shubert Theatre).