Content area
Full Text
American Repertory Theatre Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2014-2015
Finding Neverland James Graham (book), Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy (music and lyrics) (23 July-28 Sept.)
O.P.C. Eve Ensler (28 Nov.-4 Jan.)
Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2, and 3) Suzan-Lori Parks (23 Jan.-1 Mar.)
The Last Two People On Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville Paul Ford, Taylor Mac, Mandy Patinkin, and Susan Stroman (12-31 May)
Crossing Matthew Aucoin (music and libretto) (29 May-6 June)
The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) has long attracted eminent directors, performers, writers, and designers. Under the directorship of Diane Paulus, the company has augmented that star power with a reputation as an incubator of Broadway hits. So it was no surprise that the 2014-2015 season opened with a Broadway-bound musical, Finding Neverland, and continued with a roster of big names: Eve Ensler, Suzan-Lori Parks, Mandy Patinkin, Susan Stroman. Yet for all the luster that these well-known talents gave to the Cambridge company, it was Matthew Aucoin, a young, relatively unknown opera composer, who made the A.R.T.'s Crossing its greatest artistic success of the season.
Several years in development, Finding Neverland was based on the 2004 Miramax film about the friendship between playwright J. M. Barrie and four boys whom he met in a London park. As the film related, it was Barrie's association with the boys and their mother Sylvia that inspired him to write Peter Pan. The adaptation which opened at the A.R.T. was unrelentingly cheerful and affirmative, insisting that wonderful things can happen if you only believe in them hard enough. These included having the ability to fly and, apparently, bringing the dead back to life: as Barrie tells one...