E-Mail This Article to a Friend Warp zones The Warped Tour's tenth anniversary, plus Company at SpeakEasy Stage and more

Warped weekend

Next Thursday, August 19, the 10th annual edition of the Vans Warped Tour rolls into the Gillette Stadium parking lot, and the following day, there’s a one-time-only 10th Anniversary Reunion Show at the same location. Given 18-1/2 hours of punk rock spread over two days, you’ll want plan ahead. So we urge you to check out Matt Ashare’s guide to surviving Warped in "Next Weekend." And for your convenience, we’ve got the rundown on who’s playing where and — roughly — when. The festivals run from noon till 8 p.m. on both days (parking lot opens at 8 a.m.; line-ups to be announced). Set times won’t be announced until day of show, but the following are the schedules for each of Warped’s stages, with the headliners listed first and the openers last. (And no, your eyes do not deceive you: if you show up even a little late on either day, you’ll likely miss Bad Religion.) Tickets are $30.50 for Thursday and $32.50 for Friday; call (617) 931-2000. You can start mapping out your itinerary . . . right . . . now.

August 19

North Stage: New Found Glory, Coheed and Cambria, Taking Back Sunday, Flogging Molly, Anti Flag, Bouncing Souls, Bad Religion.

South Stage: Yellowcard, Story of the Year, Atmosphere, Sugarcult, International Noise Conspiracy, Tiger Army.

Maurice Stage: Rise Against, the Casualties, Rufio, Allister, Avenged Sevenfold, Matchbook Romance, Billy Talent.

Volcom Stage: Guttermouth, the Briggs, Washington Social Club, Fallout Boy, Alexis on Fire, Letter Kills, the Kinison, Rose Hill Drive.

Lyman Says: Planetsmashers, ZOX, Oreon, Jersey, Eden Row, Audio Karate, Amber Pacific, Breaking the Silence, Melee, Rolling Blackouts, Early Man, Number One Fan.

Smartpunk: Silverstein, From First to Last, Tokyo Rose, Hidden in Plain View, Brazil, Dynamite Boy, Underoath, Bayside, Underminded.

Ernie Ball: Holiday, Ambry, Plan B, the Skeptics.

Uproar: Fire When Ready, Break the Silence, Amity, A Wilhelm Scream, Matches, Boys Night Out, Days like These, Lightweight Holiday, Staring Back, Nor Am I.

August 20

North Stage: Face to Face, Less than Jake, Pennywise, Rancid, Finch, Andrew W.K., Unwritten Law, the Vandals, Bodycount, H20.

South Stage: Dropkick Murphys, Morgan Heritage, Ozomatli, MXPX, Something Corporate, Good Charlotte, New Found Glory, Sick of It All, Bad Religion.

Maurice Stage: Unseen, Lost City Angels, Strung Out, Murphy’s Law, Fishbone, Punk Rock Karaoke, Hot Rod Circuit, Agnostic Front.

Volcom Stage: Recover, Counterfeit, Big Wig, Midtown, My Chemical Romance, Avenged Sevenfold, Atmosphere, the Explosion, Street Dogs.

— Carly Carioli

SpeakEasy loves Company

SpeakEasy Stage Company, long a resident at the Boston Center for the Arts, plays both sides of the street next season. But most of its offerings will move to the 200-seat Roberts Studio Theatre in the Theatre Pavilion at Atelier 505, the posh new condominium complex adjacent to the BCA. The award-winning troupe led by Paul Daigneault will inaugurate the 200-seat space October 15 through November 13 with its 2004-2005 season opener, a "35th-anniversary production" of Stephen Sondheim & George Furth’s landmark 1970 musical Company, in which single New Yorker Bobby confronts life decisions, the urgings of his married friends, and "The Ladies Who Lunch." The production, which Daigneault is set to direct, will incorporate revisions made for the Tony-nominated 1995 Broadway revival of the show.

Daigneault has shown a knack for garnering area rights to recent Off Broadway hits, and next season is no exception. Company will be followed by the tongue-in-cheeky Johnny Guitar The Musical, which opened Off Broadway last spring and will run in the Roberts Studio November 19 through December 18. A rollicking spoof of the 1954 Nicholas Ray film Johnny Guitar, in which tough gals Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge duke it out while Sterling Hayden (in the title role) carries "a lot of man" in his boots, the show has a book by Nicholas Van Hoogstraten, music by Martin Silvestri, and lyrics and music by Joel Higgins. The score winks at 1950s country, lounge, and rock music.

Still pillaging Off Broadway, Daigneault and company move back to the BCA Plaza Theatre January 28 through February 19 for the Boston premiere of Tristine Skyler’s The Moonlight Room, which originated at New York’s Beckett Theatre last winter. This "tale of urban adolescence" in which two teens pass a night in a Manhattan hospital awaiting news of a friend who has overdosed strikes a particularly resounding note with young audiences. Paul Melone, who helmed SpeakEasy’s Elliot Norton Award–winning staging of The Shape of Things, directs.

The troupe returns to the Robert Studio March 4 through 26 to present the Boston premiere of Nilo Cruz’s 2003 Pulitzer Prize–winning play Anna in the Tropics. American Repertory Theatre/Moscow Art Theater Institute grad Daniel Jáquez directs the lyrical work, which is set in a Cuban-American cigar factory in Florida in 1929 and revolves around the reading aloud by a "lector" of Anna Karenina, the passions of which get filtered into the air.

Scoring its final coup for the season, SpeakEasy joins forces with Boston Theater Works to present the Boston premiere of Richard Greenberg’s 2003 Tony Award winner, Take Me Out, which chronicles events that follow the announcement by a Major League baseball megastar that he’s gay. Daigneault will also direct that one, which has been pronounced by the New York Times an "enchanting and enchanted take on baseball." It goes up soon after the Red Sox do, April 29 through June 4 in the Roberts. In such an intimate venue, the locker-room shower scenes should sell a few tickets.

— Carolyn Clay

"Masters of American Performance"

"Uniquely American art forms are created by dedicated pioneers. The Cutler Majestic Theatre at Emerson College will present "The Master Series of American Performance" — four events celebrating the American masters who have shaped our lives." We stopped to think. Eugene O’Neill? Tennessee Williams? Edward Albee? More like the masters of comedy and popular music. The series opens with Frank Ferrante in Groucho: A Life In Revue, the "musical entertainment" by Arthur Marx and Robert Fisher that played at Stoneham Theatre this past season, with Gabe Kaplan as Groucho. In this version, original New York and London star Ferrante will be joined by Roy Abramsohn as Harpo and Chico Marx and Marguerite Lowell as "the women in the Marxes’ lives." (And here we thought Margaret Dumont had their affections all to herself.) We’re promised "You Bet Your Life, horns honking, eyebrows raising, piano key shooting, harp strumming and chorus girls dancing"; we’re also told that "the Marx Brothers themselves played at the Cutler Majestic in Animal Crackers." Performances are October 20 at 7 p.m., October 21 through 23 at 7:30 p.m., and October 24 at 2 p.m.; tickets range from $15 to $65.

December brings Christmas from Dublin Starring The Three Irish Tenors, who, not to be confused with the Irish Tenors, are identified as "Ciaran Nagle from Riverdance, Anthony Norton from La Scala Milan, and Paul Byrom, the John McCormick Tenor of the Year 2001." Where is the "American Master"? It’s certainly not special guest Jacqueline Whelan, who, we’re told, is "one of Ireland’s most recognized sopranos, who will accompany herself on the traditional Irish harp." The performance will be "filled with songs of the season such as ‘The Little Drummer Boy,’ ‘Adeste Fideles,’ ‘Silent Night,’ ‘Saviour's Day,’ and ‘O Holy Night.’ " Maybe one of those was written by an "American Master." Whatever, they’ll be here December 1 at 7 p.m. and December 2 through 4 at 7:30 p.m., and tickets are $20 to $65.

In February, it’s The Magic of Motown "featuring the Supremes with Mary Wilson and the Temptations Review with Dennis Edwards." No argument about these groups’ contribution to American popular music. "Original members" of these bands still tour together, we’re told, "performing over 100 shows each year." We just hope that, 40 years later, there’s still some magic left when the show rolls into the Majestic February 26 at 7:30 p.m. and February 27 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $75.

Finally, there’s This Land Is Your Land: An American Song Book, with the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, and Glenn Yarbrough and the Folk Reunion (no word on what original members are left) performing the likes of "Greenfields," "If I Had A Hammer," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "There’s a Meetin’ Here Tonight," "Tom Dooley," "Try To Remember," "Charlie on the MTA," and "This Land Is Your Land!" Performances are April 2 at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. and April 3 at 4 p.m.; tickets are $45 to $68.50.

The Cutler Majestic Theatre is located at 219 Tremont Street in the Theater District. For series tickets and information, call (800) 233-3123, or visit www.maj.org/masters