Yale Rep Casts ‘An Enemy of the People’; ‘Kinky Boots’ Making Oakdale Stop

Long Wharf Theatre is doing another of its Contemporary American Voices Festival events, with staged readings of new works by American playwrights. This is the third year of this particular series, but Long Wharf has embraced staged readings throughout its 50-year-plus history.

The festival happens during the weekend of Oct. 20 to 22. “Passage” by Christopher Chen will be read at 7 p.m. on Oct. 20; “Poor Edward” by Jonathan Payne gets heard Oct. 21 at 7 p.m.; and Jen Silverman’s “All the Roads Home” will conclude the festival Oct. 22 at 3 p.m.

You’ll recognize Silverman as the writer of “The Moors,” which was at Yale Rep in 2016 and had an off-Broadway run this year; UConn’s Connecticut Repertory Theatre will be doing Silverman’s “That Poor Girl and How He Killed Her” Oct. 26 through Nov. 5.

For a readings fest, these scripts are pretty far along. “All the Roads Home,” about three generations of women and their career dreams, had a full production this year at Cincinatti’s Playhouse in the Park. Chen’s “Passage,” described as “a fantasia on E.M. Forster’s ‘A Passage to India,'” is scheduled to have its premiere in April at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. Payne’s “Poor Edward” had a workshop at New York play-development titan Ars Nova in 2015. Details of the Contemporary American Voices Festival are at 203-787-4282 and longwharf.org.

‘Les Mis’ At Bushnell

The national tour of “Les Miserable” coming to the Bushnell Oct. 3 to 8 will star Phoenix Best as Eponine, Nick Cartell as Jean Valjean, Josh Davis as Javert and Matt Shingledecker as Enjolras. The tour is co-directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell, based on the show’s 25th anniversary production that premiered in the UK in 2009.

They all have Broadway credits. Cartell’s include “Cirque du Soleil Paramour” and “Scandalous.” Best was in “Dear Evan Hansen” and the revival of “The Color Purple.” Davis was in “Beautiful.” Shingledecker could be found in “Spring Awakening” and “Wicked.” Details at lesmiz.com and bushnell.org.

Podcasts To Listen For

The British Broadcast Corporation’s weekly “Drama of the Week” podcast added an innovative five-episode mini-series this month. “Pod Plays” uses virtual reality and 360-degree audio techniques to enhance some very short, moody, largely dialogue-free dramas. Each episode is set in a different place — a bathroom, a pub, a park. Listeners are advised to listen through headphones and, when possible, put themselves in an environment similar to the one being dramatized. The plays, none of which is longer than eight minutes, are intense and creepy. They remind me of that HBO series “Room 104.”

Some other theater-friendly podcasts: On a recent episode of Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast, 95-year-old comic actor Bill Macy recalled his off-Broadway theater experiences in “Oh! Calcutta!” and “America Hurrah.” On his popular “WTF” podcast, before interviewing New Yorker editor David Remnick, Marc Maron read a long, passionate defense of the Los Angeles theater scene sent in by a listener who felt that the city’s theater’s had been unfairly derided.

Best new theater podcast I’ve come across is British playwright/historian Dan Rebellato’s Stage Directions, which discusses contemporary theater in a social and political context. The August episode is a look at right-wing theater — what might define it, and who might be writing it.

Getting Their Kicks

Who’s kicking the soccer ball around in Sarah DeLappe ensemble comedy/drama “The Wolves,” opening TheaterWorks’ 2017-18 season Oct. 5 through Nov. 5? The team members are Sharon Mary Keegan, Emily Juliette Murphy, Déa Julien, Caitlin Zoz, Carolyn Cutillo, Olivia Hoffman, Rachel Caplan, Claire Saunders and Karla Gallegos. All those characters are 16 or 17 years old. There is only one adult in the cast: “Soccer Mom,” played by Megan Byrne.

Hoffman was in Wendy Wasserstein’s “Third” at TheaterWorks in 2015, and spent this summer in “Oklahoma!” at the Goodspeed Opera House. Byrne’s previous TheaterWorks show was “Good People,” also in 2015.

“The Wolves” is directed by TheaterWorks’ Associate Artistic Director Eric Ort. The scenic design is by Mariana Sanchez, who did the dazzling white set for “War” at Yale Rep in 2014.

Land Of Lola

When a Broadway tour has already played The Bushnell, the Shubert and the Waterbury Palace, what’s left? If you’re “Kinky Boots,” you sashay right into the Oakdale in Wallingford. Everybody say yeah!

The national tour of the Harvey Fierstein/Cyndi Lauper footwear fantasy visits the Oakdale for three performances Nov. 18 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 19 at noon and 6 p.m. This new non-Equity tour is based on the original Jerry Mitchell production that’s still running on Broadway. It’s overseen by the Broadway version’s Associate Director D.B. Bond and Associate Choreographer Rusty Mowery. The tour begins in mid-September and travels through May.

The People In ‘People’

Yale Rep’s season-opening production of Ibsen’s ever-timely political parable “An Enemy of the People” will star Reg Rogers as man-against-the-system Dr. Thomas Stockmann. Enrico Colantoni will play Stockmann’s nemesis (and brother) Mayor Peter Stockmann. Joey Parsons (“Dead Man’s Cell Phone” at TheaterWorks) will play Dr. Stockmann’s wife Catherine.

Jarlath Conroy (whose most recent Yale Rep roles were Willie in “Happy Days” and the Gravedigger in “Hamlet”) is Morten Kill. Tyrone Mitchell Henderson (Yale Rep’s “War,” “The Winter’s Tale,” “The Piano Lesson” and “The America Play”) is Aslaksen. Local child actor Atticus L. Burrello (Les in “Newsies” and Michael in “Peter Pan” at Connecticut Repertory Theatre, Peter Cratchit last year in “A Christmas Carol” at Hartford Stage) will play both Elif and Morton, alternating in the roles with James Jiso Maroney.

These are eye-opening casting choices: Rogers and Colantoni are as adept at comedy as at drama, and can bring a lot of different qualities to this indignant Henrik Ibsen classic. It’s no surprise that the show’s being directed by Yale Rep Artistic Director James Bundy, a master packager whose previous casting coups included Paul Giamatti in “Hamlet,” Charles Dutton in “Death of a Salesman” and Diane Wiest in “Happy Days.” The Yale Rep production, running Oct. 6 to 28, will have a new translation by Paul Walsh.

Mike Boland, so funny in “Unnecessary Farce” at Playhouse on Park last season, is in “Enemy of the People”‘s ensemble, as are Bill Kux (Hartford Stage’s “Ether Dome,” “Noises Off,” “A Christmas Carol” and many others), Mark Sage Hamilton (Lord Capulet in this summer Elm Shakespeare Company “Romeo and Juliet”), Broadway veteran Arbender Robinson, Mariah Sage (co-founder of the New Haven company Theatre 4) and Greg Webster (from Connecticut’s avant-garde Split Knuckle Theatre troupe). Current Yale School of Drama students Stephanie Machado, Bobby Roman and Setareki Wainiqolo round out the cast. Details at yalerep.org.