Profiles Theatre announced a five-play slate for its upcoming season today, to include high-profile Midwest premieres of plays by Beth Henley and Jez Butterworth. The Lakeview company also doubles down on its commitment to playwright Neil LaBute, producing not one but two evenings of LaButean shorts.
The season opens with Henley's The Jacksonian (August 21–October 11), set at a seedy motel in Jackson, Mississippi in 1964. The play's first production, at Los Angeles's Geffen Playhouse, and a subsequent New York staging at the New Group were both helmed by Goodman Theatre artistic director Robert Falls; Joe Jahraus will direct Profiles' production. It's followed by the seasonal return of Will Kern's Hellcab (November 6–January 10).
Vices & Virtues (January 15–March 6) is, obviously, the repertory of LaBute shorts, one evening of which is brand new. It marks Profiles' 13th LaBute production since 2006. Darrell W. Cox is slated to direct the overdue Chicago premiere of Jerusalem (February 12–April 3), Butterworth's sprawling 2009 story centered on Johnny "Rooster" Byron, a small English town's outlaw of sorts. Finally, Jahraus directs The Village Bike (May 6–June 26), a comedy by British playwright Penelope Skinner that's currently having its New York premiere, where my colleague Adam Feldman described it admiringly as "like The Bridges of Madison County getting hate-fucked by 50 Shades of Grey."