The last Christmas Carol has been struck, and the Marley doorknockers and elephantine turkeys have been packed into the prop room for another year. So, with visions of sugarplums dancing out of our heads, what’s to replace them? At the Huntington Theatre Company, bombs bursting in air over Shaw’s Heartbreak House. At the American Repertory Theatre, the heady historical re-enactments of Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade. And at the Wang Theatre, Eartha Kitt putting strict time limits on a parked pumpkin. Don’t say we didn’t promise variety.

The new year kicks off this weekend with Darko Tresnjak’s Huntington staging of Heartbreak House (through February 3), George Bernard Shaw’s towering allegory of upper-class England on the verge of World War I, and Trinity Repertory Company’s presentation of Marc Wolf’s Obie-winning tour de force, Another American: Asking & Telling (through February 10), which re-examines the military’s controversial " don’t ask, don’t tell " policy. The Huntington continues its lurching-ships-of-state theme with Charles Towers’s production of Russell Lees’s Nixon’s Nixon (March 1-31), which imagines the historic encounter between Tricky Dick and Henry Kissinger on the eve of the 37th president’s 1974 resignation. And Trinity continues its theme of relevance with the New England premiere of Pulitzer-winning Angels in America author Tony Kushner’s Afghanistan-set new play, Homebody/Kabul (March 15–April 21).

At the American Repertory Theatre, the winter season kicks off with the world premiere of Stone Cold Dead Serious (in repertory February 1–March 13), by Adam Rapp, the author of the potent Nocturne. Marcus Stern directs the piece, " a high-octane romp across the wastelands of American suburbia " featuring " a family of dropouts, junkies, and QVC addicts. " And they’re the Bradys next to the dramatis personae of German playwright Peter Weiss’s famous 1964 foray into the theater of cruelty, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (in repertory February 15–March 23). János Szász, who helmed last season’s stunning Mother Courage, directs.

The Market Theater has commissioned a new work to be created by world-renowned experimental theater artist Ping Chong with Michael Rohd. Entitled Reason (February 23–March 17), the piece asks, " How do we make logic of the world with our heart, not just our head? " And master gabber Spalding Gray’s 1985 Swimming to Cambodia paddles into Sanders Theatre, courtesy of the FleetBoston Celebrity Series, January 17-19.

In the Theater District, much is planned for the winter months, including the pre-Broadway engagement, at the Colonial Theatre, of the London hit The Graduate (February 20–March 10), in which Kathleen Turner reprises her role as Mrs. Robinson. A stage adaptation by Terry Johnson of the 1960s-set California tale that brought Dustin Hoffman to prominence, the show also features Jason Biggs of American Pie and Alicia Silverstone of Clueless. Before that, Eve Ensler returns to the Wilbur Theatre with her orgasmic performance of The Vagina Monologues (January 8-20). Eartha Kitt casts her spell over the Wang Theatre as the Fairy Godmother in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (January 15-20). And Saturday Night Fever white-suits it through the Wang (January 22-27). On the weightier side, the Wilbur hosts David Auburn’s Tony- and Pulitzer-winning mathematical whodunit Proof (January 29–February 10).

Elsewhere, ace actor Richard McElvain plays the eponymous religious hypocrite of Molière’s Tartuffe at the New Repertory Theatre (January 9–February 10). Boston Playwrights’ Theatre presents the world premiere of Miss Price, the one-woman play about the liberation of a small-town librarian that actor/playwright John Kuntz wrote for local diva Paula Plum (January 11-26). Eric C. Engel, who directed Kuntz and Plum in Kuntz’s mesmeric Sing Me to Sleep, is at the helm. At Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell, Annette Miller stars as Queen Elizabeth I in Bill Bruehl’s Short-Haired Grace (January 11–February 9). Set in 1595, the play depicts a meeting between QE1 and the Irish female pirate Grace O’Malley. At the Boston Center for the Arts, SpeakEasy Stage Company has Elliot Norton Award winner Bridget Beirne and Christopher Chew in the New England premiere of Michael John LaChiusa’s musical The Wild Party (February 1-23). Andrew Volkoff directs the piece, which is based on a jazz-age-set epic poem by Joseph Moncure March.

And dance? Boston Ballet offers the romantic Giselle (February 14-24) in a production staged by Maina Gielgud, who last season left her post as artistic director of the company before assuming it. That’s at the Wang. We will also see the Celebrity Series debut of Garth Fagan Dance (February 1-3) at the Emerson Majestic Theatre; Fagan won a Tony for his choreography for The Lion King. And what season would be complete without an appearance by that most musical of troupes, Mark Morris Dance Group, which the Celebrity Series brings to the Shubert Theatre March 14-17.

Issue Date: January 3-10, 2002

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