Playhouse season to include ‘Dreamgirls,’ ‘Shakespeare’

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown Playhouse’s 2019-2020 season will begin in September with the musical “Dreamgirls.”

The theater will present four shows on its main stage; four more in the intimate Moyer Room as part of the Griffith-Adler Actors Series; and two youth theater offerings.

“Dreamgirls” is a fictitious account of a Supremes-like singing group’s rise to fame. A Tony Award winner in 1981, the show last appeared at the Youngstown Playhouse in 1989. Since then, it has been adapted into an Oscar-winning motion picture (2006), and was revived in London in 2016.

Also scheduled for the main stage are the Playhouse premiere of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “A Grand Night for Singing” in October. The musical revue features songs by the theatrical writing team from “Oklahoma,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I” and “The Sound of Music.”

An adaptation of the Academy Award winning film “Shakespeare in Love” will open on Valentine’s Day. And in May, the Playhouse will collaborate with Youngstown State University to present “The Light in the Piazza,” a Tony-winning musical about an American mother and daughter vacationing in Italy in the 1950s

Moyer Room offerings will open with “Art,” Yasmina Reza’s comedy about the perception of modern art, in September.

“The Drawer Boy,” a drama about a young actor researching life on a farm run by two elderly bachelors, will be in November.

March will see the area premiere of David Ives’ seriocomic play “Venus in Fur,” a two-character study of a director and the sexually brash actress he is auditioning.

In June, the musical “The Story of My Life” will be offered.

The youth theater will present Disney’s “Frozen Jr.” in December, and a stage version of local author Christopher Barzak’s novel “The Gone Away Place.”

Flex passes are on sale now; call 330-788-8739 or go to theyoungstownplayhouse.com (discounted through June 30).