Northlight Theatre will keep it in the family for the 2017–18 season, the company’s 43rd. The five-play slate hitting the Skokie stage is composed entirely of works from playwrights Northlight has previously produced in the past decade.
The season will open in the fall with the world premiere of Bruce Graham’s Sanctions (Sept 14–Oct 22), in which Mary Beth Fisher will play an academic administrator dealing with a college athletic program returning to big-money football after NCAA violations. Northlight artistic director BJ Jones helms his company’s fifth production by Philadelphia playwright Graham since 2011, following The Outgoing Tide, Stella & Lou, White Guy on the Bus and Funnyman.
The Book of Will (Nov 9–Dec 17) recounts how members of William Shakespeare’s company managed to compile and publish the First Folio in the years after the playwright’s death. Jessica Thebus directs the Midwest premiere of Gunderson’s play, which is currently enjoying its debut at Denver Center Theatre, where it was commissioned. Gunderson co-authored Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, which Northlight premiered in November.
Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew (Jan 25–Mar 4) follows the last workers at one of Detroit’s last auto plants at the beginning of the Great Recession. It's the final piece in Morisseau’s “Detroit Trilogy,” following Detroit ’67 and Paradise Blue; Ron OJ Parson, who directed Detroit ’67 at Northlight in 2013 and will stage Paradise Blue at TimeLine Theatre Company this summer, will helm Skeleton Crew as well.
Jones will direct a new revival of Martin McDonagh’s breakthrough work, The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Mar 15–Apr 22), with Kate Fry in the leading role of Irish spinster Maureen Folan. Jones and Northlight last touched on McDonagh with his The Lieutenant of Inishmore in 2009.
The final play on the docket is Matthew Lopez’s The Legend of Georgia McBride (May 10–June 17), a playful comedy about a straight Elvis impersonator who turns to drag to make ends meet. Vanessa Stalling will direct this Chicago premiere by Lopez, whose The Whipping Man was staged at Northlight in 2013.
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