Haven Theatre has announced a two-show lineup that will bookend the 2015–16 theater season. Both plays are works by women playwrights making their Chicago premieres.
Arlene Hutton's 1998 romantic comedy Last Train to Nibroc follows a couple who meet in 1940 on a train that also happens to be carrying the bodies of the newly deceased writers F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West. It was the first play in what became a trilogy about the couple, May and Raleigh; Jason Gerace will direct Haven's production, to run July 24–September 6 at Theater Wit. The opener of Haven's third full season will come hot on the heels of its previously announced second-season closer, the Chicago premiere of Stephen Belber's Don't Go Gentle, about a retired judge whose sudden onset of altruism arouses suspicion in his adult children; Cody Estle stages that show for a June 2–July 12 stand also at Wit.
The other entry, coming in late spring of 2016, is the U.S. premiere of The Distance, by British playwright Deborah Bruce. In the 2014 work, Bea's friends don't know what to make of her return to England, having left behind the family she moved to Australia to start five years earlier. Elly Green will direct the production, running May 20–June 26 at Raven Theatre.