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New England's regional theaters provided throughout the 2005-06 season, as they have done in past seasons, a balanced diet of classics and new plays.
As always, the plays of William Shakespeare loomed large in the category of classics: King John, The Taming of the Shrew (both at Shakespeare & Company), Hamlet (Trinity Repertory Company), All's Well That Ends Well (Yale Repertory Company), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Long Wharf Theatre), Love's Labours Lost (Huntington Theatre) and Romeo and Juliet (American Repertory Theatre). Anton Chekhov is another perennial favorite on New England stages: The Three Sisters (American Repertory Theatre) and The Cherry Orchard (Yale Repertory Company). Somewhat rarer were Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (Trinity Repertory Company), a seldom-seen household name; Pierre Marivaux' Island of Slaves (American Repertory Theatre); and The Tamer Tamed (Shakespeare & Company), a true rarity from a late contemporary of Shakespeare.
The fluid category of "modern classics" was also generously represented. Important American plays of the twentieth century included Arthur Miller's The Price (Portland Stage Company), Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer (Trinity Repertory Theatre), and an underrated masterpiece, The Front Page by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht (Long Wharf Theatre). Noel Coward's Private Lives (Long Wharf Theatre) and Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit (American Repertory Theatre) are perfect examples of polar opposites-in theme, approach and execution-that have managed to maintain their fame over the course of three-quarters of a century.
Regional theaters tend to neglect contemporary commercial playwrights, and...