Lyric Stage Company

Beginning May 11, SpeakEasy Stage will present the Boston Premiere of the hit Broadway musical comedy XANADU. This acclaimed show will be the company’s 100th production.

This hit off-Broadway play tells the story of two men, the communist Harry Hay and the Viennese refugee and fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, as they fall in love while forming the first gay-rights organization in the pre-Stonewall United States. "Temperamental" was a necessary code word in the early 1950s for Gay or Queer. Few were out in the open and there was an underlying danger (societal, political and legal) of being honestly homosexual.

Hailed as one of the best new plays on Broadway, Time Stands Still is the story of Sarah, a photojournalist, and James, a foreign correspondent, who are picking up the pieces of their lives after a recent brush with death while fighting with their own individual humanity. With excellent acting, this production looks at intense lives in our contemporary turbulent time.

Set in a shabby Chicago neighborhood, a downtrodden former hippy donut shop owner hires a street-savvy aspiring young writer with hustle and bright ideas. Elegantly directed by Spiro Veloudos, this is a play full of pathos, laughs and compelling characters. Written by the Pulitzer Prize winning author of August: Osage County, this drama mixes the challenge of embracing one's past with the redemptive power of friendship. This is a must see and tell your friends comedy/drama.

The special comic and musical soul of 1930s Harlem lives on in this rollicking, swinging show. The music and performances are rowdy, raunchy, and humorous. With great songs, we are embraced by the various moods of the era reflecting the Harlem Renaissance and Fats Waller's view of life. Through his music, Waller's helps us to experience life as a journey meant for pleasure and play. The joint was jumpin'.

The Lyric Stage Company of Boston opens its season, September 2 through October 8, with a lively and ambitious production of the musical Big River; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, based on the novel by Mark Twain with music and lyrics by Roger Miller and book by William Hauptman. On Broadway the musical won seven Tony Awards and ran for 1,005 performances.

The Nathan Louis Jackson play Broke-Ology will be presented at Boston's Lyric Stage March 25 – April 23, 2011. The play about the issues of an African American family had it premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. That production moved to a successful run off Broadway. Now it is being restaged in Boston.

Theresa Rebeck's comedy The Understudy will be performed at Boston's Lyric Stage from January 1 to 29. The play stars Kelby. T. Aken, Laura Latreille and Christopher James Webb, and is directed by Larry Coen. It entails a screwed up attempt to stage a text by Kafka.

The Lyric Stage Company of Boston announces the fifth production of the 2009- 2010 Season: Karen Zacarias' intriguing new story of love, family and scientific discovery, Legacy of Light Directed by Lois Roach, the play runs February 12 through March 13, 2010.

David Esbjornson was Arthur Miller's director of choice late in life, staging the premieres of his last two plays. He will bring Miller's classic "All My Sons" to the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston through February 7.

Big Edie Bouvier Beal was the aunt of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. She lived for many years in a ramshackle 28 room mansion "Grey Gardens" with her daughter, Little Edie, Beal in East Hampton, Long Island. In 1975 the Maysles Brothers documented them living with cats, and rodents amid mountains of garbage. They were the subject of a recent HBO drama as well as the musical now running at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston.

Lyric Stage Company is in top form with the New England Premiere of this Tony award musical about the famously dysfunctional branch of the Kennedy dynasty—the Bouvier-Beales—who were being hounded by county health officials threatening to evict them from their cottage in the Hamptons, Grey Gardens.

Spiro Veloudos has been a fixture on the Boston theatre scene for more than thirty years, and is currently Producing Artistic Director of Lyric Stage. In a revealing conversation, he gives us a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to run a Boston theatre company.

Tennesee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof inhabits a Mississippi Delta plantation world of hypocrisy, greed and mendacity. A disfunctional wealthy family celebrates the birthday of its patriarch in a destructive way. Maggie the Cat, Brick, and Big Daddy all portray a human firestorm caused by addiction to the bottle, desperation to conceive a child, and not so ambiguous feelings toward a late best friend.

From the lights on the Boston Common, to the lights on the marquees, Boston knows how to celebrate the Holidays. Their traditions have long histories and deep roots, from the Holiday Pops and Handel & Haydn Messiah to the Christmas Revels and The Nutcracker. To help you plan your holiday entertainment, here is a preview and guide for Boston Holiday Events 2008.

In David Mamet's play "November" having its hilarious New England premiere at Lyric Stage Company of Boston we view the desperate final days of the lame duck President Charles Smith played with ferocious zest by Richard Snee.