Best place to hear a swan song
It was official last spring - this is guiding eminence Robert Brustein's final year at the helm of the
American Repertory Theatre, the Cambridge institution he founded more than two decades ago. Brustein,
who will remain at the ART as founding director, will be succeeded as artistic director by Robert Woodruff
next August. Meanwhile, there is Brustein's swan-song season, and the outgoing honcho (whose The Siege of
the Arts was recently published by Ivan R. Dee) is warbling up a storm. The ART season, which kicks off
this month with Othello, also includes Brustein's new adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's Enrico IV, a
follow-up to his famed version of Six Characters in Search of an Author, which is widely recognized as an
ART signature production. The artistic director will leave his post with a bang as well. His final season
in charge culminates with the return of Tony Award winner and long-time company member Cherry Jones in the
title role of a new musical adaptation of Lysistrata, with book by Larry Gelbart and music by Alan Menken.
What better send-off than Aristophanes-meets-M*A*S*H-meets-The Little Mermaid could anyone ask for?
American Repertory Theatre, Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge, (617) 547-8300.
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