The Gondoliers

WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

June 27- July 13

The Gondoliers, or, The King of Barataria, was the twelfth opera written together by Gilbert and Sullivan. Opening on December 7, 1889 at the Savoy Theatre, The Gondoliers ran for 554 performances, and was the last of the G&S operas that would achieve wide popularity. Its lilting score has, perhaps, the most sparkling and tuneful music of them all and calls, perhaps, for the most dancing.Gilbert returns, in this opera, to satire of snobbery regarding class distinctions and begins his fascination, which will play an even larger part in the next opera, Utopia Limited, with the "stock company act" using the absurd convergence of natural persons and legal entities. Again setting his work comfortably far away from mother England, Gilbert is emboldened to level somewhat harsh criticism on the noble class, and the institution of the monarchy itself.

Play, Footfalls, and other pieces by Samuel Beckett

July 18 – August 3, 2025

Three figures, encased in urns, recount — and relive — a love triangle in a rapid, overlapping torrent of speech. In Play, Samuel Beckett captures the absurdity, longing, guilt, and compulsive memory of human life with haunting precision and bleak humor.

Presented alongside Footfalls and other short works, this evening brings together Beckett’s late masterpieces of minimalism and movement — stories told through silence, repetition, and the barest gestures of life. A rare and powerful theatrical experience.

Nine Parts of Desire

Heather Raffo

Aug 8 Aug 24

A well-crafted, absorbing account of Islamic women's lives as seen through the eyes of a secular-minded, Australian-born feminist journalist. Wall Street Journal Middle East correspondent Brooks describes with sensitivity and clarity her conversations and relationships with Islamic women, from the blue-jean-clad, American-born queen of Jordan to a devout Palestinian who shares her abusive husband with another woman in a four-room hovel with 14 children. Many of the obstacles she describes are well known: Some Islamic women are not allowed to show flesh or pray out loud in public (their voices are too arousing and could provoke unholy thoughts in men); many professions are closed to women; and severe sexual double standards still exist.

Ivanov

Anton Chekhov

Aug 8 Aug 24

Anton Chekhov was a master whose daring work revolutionized theater, and this was as true of Ivanov, his first full-length play, as of The Cherry Orchard, his last. Ivanov is a portrait of a man plagued with self-doubt and despair. Considered one of Chekhov’s most elusive characters, he seeks more in life than the self-absorption and ennui he sees in his contemporaries. Tormented by falling out of love with his dying Jewish wife, Ivanov, on her death, proposes to the young daughter of his neighbor, but, as the wedding party assembles, a final burst of his habitual indecisiveness has fatal results.