E-Mail This Article to a Friend Say WHAT? Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater announces its upcoming season, Medford votes down a new arts center, and more

WHAT’s up

Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, which turns 20 this summer, has announced its upcoming season. As always offering the least canned theater on the Cape, the troupe will field two world premieres, three New England premieres, and the seaside shenanigans of perennial area favorites playwright Gip Hoppe, author of A New War, and writer/actor John Kuntz.

The season kicks off May 26 through June 26 with Hoppe’s Cuckooland, a comedy/fantasy inspired by Aristophanes’s The Birds (not to be confused with Alfred Hitchcock’s). Obie winner Peggy Shaw is up next, with the area premiere, June 30 through July 24, of a new piece called To My Chagrin, in which the performer, considering her relationship with her mixed-race grandson, "weaves together James Brown, a passion for vintage cars, and live percussion by Vivian Stoll." Kuntz spins onto the scene July 5 through August 31 with Monday and Tuesday performances of his one-man play Glitterati, which is about "a literary agent who’s throwing a book-release party for a universally reviled author" and is so desperate for guests that she invites strangers from a nearby convenience store. That’s followed by the world premiere of Gizmo Love, July 29 through September 4, a comedy from John Kovenbach that melds Sartre and Mamet into a plot about a professional screenwriter assigned to pilot a "masterpiece in the making" by a novice writer to the screen. Sam Weisman directs.

Then there are two more New England premieres. James Glossman directs Jeffrey Sweet’s Immoral Imperatives, September 9 through 25. Daddy Walton himself, Ralph Waite, stars in the work, in which a retired professor and his young wife invite a free-spirited old friend to live with them in the Florida Keys. Finally, as beach weather leaves us behind, Brendan Hughes directs Private Jokes, Public Places, September 30 through October 24. Oren Safdie, the son of famed architect Moshe Safdie, has written a "biting satire about sexual tensions and intellectual pretensions in the world of contemporary architecture as a graduate student defends her thesis on the erection of a public swimming pool to an all-male jury." The New Yorker called the piece "an X-acto-blade-sharp new comedy" when it debuted in Manhattan. Wonder what Safdie Sr. would make of WHAT’s shack by the sea. For our part, we’re thrilled it’s there, shaking off the chains of traditional summer stock.

— Carolyn Clay

Medford votes down arts center

Medford won’t be shaking the arts-space blues any time soon. After a four-hour meeting on March 16, the Medford City Council voted down the proposed Medford Arts Center by one vote. The Arts Center would have provided stable, long-term, affordable studio space for 24 artists in the decommissioned Swan School in East Medford (see "Arts News" in our March 5 issue). Three councilors were for the Arts Center, three were opposed, and city-council president Stephanie Muccini Burke voted it down. Says Peter Houk, a member of the screening committee for the project, "It came down to holding the Arts Center and any kind of condo developer to the same standards. They [the city councilors] wanted it to generate the same revenue as any type of development." For the group of Medford artists involved in acquiring the space, Houk adds, "It’s back to the drawing board. We’re pretty heartbroken. I don’t know if we’ll get this opportunity again."

— Nina MacLaughlin

The Wang and the Ballet

Despite their rupture over The Nutcracker, the Wang Center for the Performing Arts and Boston Ballet aren’t about to break up anytime soon. Last week, Ballet executive director Valerie Wilder and Wang Center president and CEO Josiah Spaulding Jr. announced that the Ballet has signed a five-year agreement with the Wang Center to stage its regular subscription-season performances at the Wang Theatre through June 30, 2009. Wilder made this statement: "The Wang Theatre has a special history in the life of this city, for our company, and in the hearts of our audience. We are very happy that Boston Ballet patrons will continue to enjoy the ambiance of this elegant venue, and that our dancers will have the experience of performing on the Wang stage." Spaulding added, "A tradition continues. Boston Ballet is an important cultural institution in our city, and we are pleased to seal this partnership for the next five years."

All true, but after the Wang Center declined to renew the Ballet’s contract for The Nutcracker (preferring to bring in the Rockettes’ touring Christmas show, though the official announcement is still forthcoming) and the Ballet signed a contract with Clear Channel to stage the Tchaikovsky holiday classic at the Colonial Theatre this year and at the renovated Opera House from 2005 through 2007, there was speculation that the company might want to move its subscription season to the Opera House as well. There are, however, some obvious reasons (and probably some not so obvious ones) why the Ballet is staying put. The Lion King is expected to occupy the Opera House for the entire 2004-2005 season, so in any event the company would have had to wait a year. And though at 3600 seats the Wang Theatre is arguably too big for Boston Ballet (or pretty much anything other than the movies it was built to show), it’s still a wonderful venue for ballet if you’re fortunate enough to be sitting up close. The Wang Center, for its part, needs attractive events to book into the Wang Theatre for the rest of the year, and those are in short supply these days, especially now that it has to compete with Clear Channel.

Good conductors are always in short supply, so it comes as no surprise that with current music director Francisco Noya stepping down to continue his conducting career in Europe, the Longwood Symphony Orchestra, "the orchestra of Boston’s medical community," has tapped Boston Ballet music director Jonathan McPhee to succeed him beginning with the 2004-2005 season. McPhee is also the music director of Symphony by the Sea. For more about his new appointment, see Features Editor Tamara Wieder’s interview with him in the News & Features section; for information about the LSO’s 2004-2005 season, call (617) 332-7011 or visit www.longwoodsymphony.org.

There aren’t all that many good dancers out there, either, so it’s likewise unsurprising that Boston Ballet principal Sarah Lamb, who was promoted just this season, is leaving to become a first soloist at the Royal Ballet in London. She distinguished herself last season as Lise in Frederick Ashton’s La Fille Mal Gardée and Juliet in Rudi van Dantzig’s Romeo and Juliet; one would hope to see her as Odette/Odile in May’s Swan Lake. For next season, the company’s roster of principals is down to four women (Adriana Suárez, who’s expecting her second child, Larissa Ponomarenko, Pollyana Ribeiro, and Lorna Feijóo) and three men (Yury Yanowsky, Roman Rykine, who’s finally back from injury, and Nelson Madrigal). Promotions, if any, for next season have yet to be announced.

— Jeffrey Gantz

And Suzanne Farrell at Harvard

No, the great principal dancer from New York City Ballet won’t be tying on her pointe shoes when Harvard University hosts "An Evening with Suzanne Farrell" on April 15, but any evening with Farrell is an evening to treasure. What’s described as "a conversation and dance demonstration" (no word on who’ll be doing the demonstrating) will begin at 8 p.m. at Harvard’s Lowell Hall, with New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella, herself very much worth hearing, holding down the other half of the conversation. The event is part of Harvard’s two-day (April 14 and 15) "Symposium on Balanchine," which will include two sessions of speakers, and the Pusey Library exhibition "George Balanchine: A Life’s Journey in Ballet," which is drawn from the Harvard Theatre Collection (curated by Phoenix contributor Iris Fanger) and will run April 15 through May 28. Free tickets to "An Evening with Suzanne Farrell" — two to a customer, we understand — will be available at the Harvard box office in Holyoke Center as of April 2, and we recommend that you don’t wait till April 3. For more information about "An Evening with Suzanne Farrell," call (617) 495-8676 or (617) 495-8683; for information about the symposium and exhibition, call (617) 495-2445.

— Jeffrey Gantz