Harlequin Productions' Season 2012 Season Announcement

Stardust Serenade

by Harlowe Reed

November / December 2011

As the Stardust gang prepares for a private party for a young flyer who'll soon be off to war in Europe, a government man arrives ready to lock the place up for back taxes. But ways are found to frustrate Uncle Sam while the show goes on. Celebrity impressions, 40s swing, comedy and holiday cheer are a great antidote to a war overseas and worry at home. The Stardust series has become one of the region's favorite traditions for the season of nostalgia and hope and one of the best ways for the whole family to celebrate together!

The Seafarer

by Conor MacPherson

January / February 2012

From the writer who brought us The Weir, St. Nicholas and Shining City. It's Christmas Eve, and Sharky has returned to Dublin to look after his irascible, aging brother who's recently gone blind. Old drinking buddies Ivan and Nicky are holed up at the house, too, hoping to play some cards. But with the arrival of a stranger from the distant past, the stakes are raised ever higher. Sharky may be playing for his very soul.

"…dark and enthralling Christmas fable of despair and redemption…tingles with the author's acute and authentic sense of what is knowable and unknowable in life…THE SEAFARER may just be the pick-me-up play of the season." – NY Times

Enchanted April

by Matthew Barber

March / April 2012

When two frustrated London housewives decide to rent a villa in Italy for a holiday away from their bleak marriages, they recruit two very different English women to share the cost and the experience. There, among the wisteria blossoms and Mediterranean sunshine, all four bloom again—rediscovering themselves in ways that they—and we—could never have expected.

"ENCHANTED APRIL is as good as they come: a lush, thoroughly refreshing theatrical holiday. Escape has seldom seemed so sweet. A magical triumph." – LA Times

My Old Lady

by Israel Horovitz

may 2012

When a down-on-his-luck, middle-aged man inherits an apartment in Paris, he plans to solve his financial woes by selling it. He arrives on the doorstep and discovers, to his dismay, that the elderly woman living there has lifetime habitation rights under an arcane French law, and she is not about to give them up. Because he has no other place to go, she invites him to rent a room in the spacious apartment. A spiral of friendship, a row and a romance with the old lady's outspoken daughter, and some uncomfortable revelations about his unmourned father, affect all in this poignant play about how the secrets of the dead can transform meaning for the living.

Summer Session

June / July 2012

Turn up the volume on summer! Join us as we continue Harlequin's original smash hit journey through the history of American pop music as we roll out of the sixties and rock on into later decades. Don't miss out on one of the best ways to keep cool on a summer night: rockin' out to some of the hottest music the world has ever known! We provide a band of pros, a stage on fire with some of the region's best musical talent, and a major dose of eye-popping video magic. It's a sure-fire cure for the Summertime Blues!

The Americans Across the Street

by Carter W. Lewis

August / September 2012

Derek Slaughterhouse is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author recovering from a recent brush with death. He presently finds himself parked, unable to write, on the front porch of his home in a gated community, from which he loudly denounces his upscale neighbors through an amber haze of scotch-laced disgust. His enmity toward the American Way of greed is matched only by his sense of failure in himself. When his estranged, newly widowed sister arrives with her teenage daughter, they soon find themselves conscripted into Derek's assault on his neighborhood's hypocrisy and form the bonds of survival that may redeem them all.

Richard III

by William Shakespeare

September / October 2012

One of the most famous villains in theatrical history is brought to ruthless and ambitious life in one of Shakespeare's most intense plays. With wit and guile, the deformed Richard murders his way to the throne, only to find he has yet further need for skullduggery. Cold and calculating while others are angry and emotional, he uses charm, wit and and the skills of an accomplished actor to achieve his ends. The first of his plays to be built around one compelling character, Richard III won an online survey this Spring as the Shakespeare play our audience most wanted to see in 2012.