Playwright Lisa Loomer.
- Playwright Amy Herzog. (Photo taken by Rachel Levy.)
Still catching up on season announcements and such. (Not to mention the theater calendar page—patience, folks, patience!) One of the more intriguing small-theater slates in the offing comes from the nearly quarter-century-old Square One Theatre Company in Stratford.
The company’s had good luck with mysteries in the past, and is leading off its 23rd season Nov. 2-17 with British playwright David Foley’s redundantly titled Deadly Murder. The three-character thriller is indeed a humorous piece amid its gunplay and double-crosses. Reviews on Foley’s website call it “madcap” and “witty,” with “crackling tension.”
March 1-16 brings a rare Connecticut production of a work by popular contemporary West Coast playwright Lisa Loomer. Distracted, a comedy about attention deficit disorder, premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2007 and was done a couple of years later at the Roundabout Theater Company in New York. Loomer was one of the many contributors to Motherhood Out Loud, which was staged at Hartford Stage in 2010 and later moved to Off Broadway.
The third and final show of the Square One Season is another small-cast drama by a contemporary female playwright, Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles. Herzog attended the Yale School of Drama, where her play for the annual Carlotta Festival was anything but small-cast: The Wendy Play had nearly two dozen actors in it, half of them high school students. Herzog has since become accomplished at more intimate dialogues, including the successful suspense/romance Belleville last season at the Yale Repertory Theatre. 4000 Miles, which Square One will present May 17 through June 1, had a successful Off Broadway premiere at New York’s Duke theater in 2010, then moved to Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre last year. The setting of the play is based on Herzog’s grandmother’s apartment on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village.
Cool season, and Square One has always had a surfeit of strong actresses of certain ages to accomodate all those striking female roles.
Square One operates out of the Stratford Theatre, 2422 Main Street, Stratford. (203) 375-8778. Tickets are $20 and—whoo! Discount!—$19 for students and seniors. http://squareonetheatre.com/