Ching Valdes-Aran, Calvin Smith, Lisa Kron and Kimberly Hebert-Gregory in Kron's The Veri**on Play, directed by Nicholas Martin at the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival through April 1.

The Verizon Play

Through April 1 at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Written by Lisa Kron. Directed by Nicholas Martin. Original music by Jeanine Tesori.

Lisa Kron’s contemporary comedy of communications breakdowns and corporate conspiracies is like a long, weird ramble that cuts out a lot. The comedy is in the chaos, which distorts the play’s calling.

It starts well, with a woman named Jenni (played by Kron herself, in the manner in which she has played herself in a lot of her autobiographical plays) having some friends over and trying to get through an anecdote about how she’d been screwed by the phone company. There’s great “I’ve been there” humor in how she shushes her pals when they interrupt with their own tales of victimization by unfeeling service representatives.

Director Nicholas Martin and a game cast and creative team build upon this misshaped merriment with hordes of changing characters, an international chase scene and various support-group showdowns. Some theatergoers fall in willingly with such hi-jinks, but I tend to see only desperation, a transparent attempt to extend the length of an underdeveloped play. There are several strong performances, with Kron at the unhinged center and a troupe of quickchange character actors (I especially admired Calvin Smith and Hannah Bos) revolving around her.

The pity is, as the fantasy gets more frantic and physical, the empathetic humor of the show’s charming opening gets trampled. The excesses—too many subplots, too many characters, too many vain attempts to eke out one more cheap laugh—get tedious after a while. A lame attempt to mark the piece as some sort of revolutionary moment to rise up against one’s cell-phone oppressors is diluted as soon as it begins through theater in-jokes and a general lack of spine.

Stylistically, The Veri**on Play is a reminder of Lisa Kron’s early works with the New York ensemble The Five Lesbian Brothers, which brought vaudeville clowning and exaggerated characters to stories of female empowerment and changing society. There’s the same anything-goes free-association playmaking anarchy that’s associated with classic FLB works such as Voyage to Lesbos and The Secretaries. What it lacks that those other works had, however, is a point. It’s one thing to spin wild yarns of female office workers casting off the yoke of starvation diets into parodies of Greek Tragedy empowerment. It’s another to run around complaining that the phone company is evil.

(For a much greater ensemble piece about international corporate conspiracies by communications companies, see improv theater pioneer Ted Ficker’s masterful film satire The President’s Analyst from 40-odd years ago; it has essentially the same anixieties and paranoiac jokes, but with more solid intent.)

Since the 1990s, Lisa Kron has reined in her more chaotic impulses to deliver throughtful, challenging and contained autobiographical works such as 101 Humiliating Stories, 2.5 Minute Ride and Well. The Veri**on Play… gee, I hate putting those asterisks into the title; I feel like I’m helping sustain a bad joke about this play’s supposed subversive intent. This is a romp. It’s well-directed (by no less a talent than Nicholas Martin, who works wonders with large casts) and has a culminating song and dance (by no less a talent as Jeanine Tesori of Caroline or Change fame). But its ridiculous attempts to be a call to arms becomes a prank call, a wrong number, a dropped opportunity.

My first Humana Festival event: a too-short one-hour seven-panelist discussion of “Critiquing Criticism: (re)imaging the future,” which could just as easily have been called “Extolling Criticism: The future is now.” The idea was that most people, or at least the hundreds of people in the room, still could differentiate between criticism and “reviewing,” or between criticism and “consumer guide,” and between criticism and the lack of criticism. When one panelist, William Hirschman (the Florida-based critic and journalist who’s also active with the American Theatre Critic Association) made a disparaging reference to the ubiquitous “14-year-old fan-boy” critic, and another speaker took up the reference, a third panelist—Diep Tran Editorial Assistant at American Theatre Magazine—announced that “I take umbrage with the vilification of the 14-year-old fanboy.”

The upshot was that passion will out, and if there are no longer hard and fast rules which govern the standards of criticism (“professional” or otherwise), well, that’s not a bad thing. People still gravitate to the critics they trust. As Thomas Graves of Austin’s Rude Mechs troupe put it, “True criticism connects our work to a larger conversation.” There was healthy discussion of the critic’s role in preparing an audience for an event (especially one that’s new or in-process), of “managing expectations.

A wide-ranging discussion for sure, but timekeeping moderator Polly Carl of Howlround made sure it didn’t descend into mindless tangents (hey, like bad criticism.) Sasha Anawalt, who runs Arts Journalism programs at USC Annenberg and was my mentor at the NEA fellowship which fomented the Engine28.com site last summer in Los Angeles, frequently mentioned the new book Counting New Beans—Intrinsci Impact and the Value of Art edited by Clayton Lord.

Plus, allow me a brief blush, Ilana M. Brownstein, director of New Work at Company One in Boston, gave a shout-out to this very website when discussing vibrant work being done online.

Guess I’m in the right place. Except for the pollen count, of course.

I am in Kentucky, for my first experience of the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s annual Humana Festival.

The sum of my connections to the Humana, now in its 36^th year, are this:

• My fine new friend Lou Harry, whom I met on my last cross-country theater jaunt (an NEA fellowship last summer in Los Angeles) convinced me to go.

• The director of that L.A. program, and of the USC Annenberg program in Arts Journalism, Sasha Anawalt, will be a panelist in an future-of-the-arts-type discussion this morning.

• Les Waters, the brand new director of Actors Theatre of Louisville and of Humana, has, as the other kind of “director,” helmed several shows in recent seasons at the Yale Repertory Theatre, including Sarah Ruhl’s versions of Eurydice and Three Sisters.

• Lisa Kron, who’s performed and taught fairly regularly at Yale (and also done show at Hartford Stage) is debuting a new play at Humana this year.

• Bob Krakower, who was a student of my father’s in the Drama Department at Tufts University back in the 1970s, was big deal in the growth of Humana in its early years. He even penned one of its signature “10 Minute Plays” that got published.

• Jon Jory, Artistic Director of Actors Theatre of Lousville for decades, also founded th Long Wharf Theatre. He lasted only a couple of years in New Haven before being ousted by the Long Wharf board; the Long Wharf was handed to Arvin Brown, who did not do badly with it, but it’s a major “What if?” in my mind: Could Humana have happened in New Haven instead? Could it have lasted?

That’s it—my entire juxtification for being here in Louisville, Kentucky. I’ll be posting frequently over the weekend as much as Humanally possible.

Not exactly a theater event, but some of you follow my activities as a punk ukulele player. I’m part of a low-key acoustic coffeehouse performance tonight in honor of the beleaguered Occupy New Haven settlement on New Haven Green. I’ve worked up some new material just for the occasion, and have revived my novel rendition of The Clash’s “Know Your Rights.”

The show, which also features two musicians associated with the Occupy settlement—Ray Neal and Sean Conlon—plus Bill Collins (West Coast punk legend, local rockabilly star and famed composer of newfangled rock union-rally songs) is 8 p.m. at United Church on the Green, at the corner of Temple and Elm streets, just a few yards from the Occupy New Haven tents.

This event was first discussed (by me and Rev. John Gage of United Church) weeks ago, before the recent to-do about evictions and demands and such which has turned a peaceful relationship between city and Occupy rather bitter. Whatever your feelings about Occupy New Haven (and I think it’s hard not to have mixed ones, or for everyone to have differently proritized ones), I thought it’d be nice to have a chance to relax, share music and chat, and be a community for an evening.

The event—again, that’s Saturday, March 24, 8 p.m. at United Church on the Green, is free. Donations will be accepted.

Long Wharf Theatre‘s Next Stage program for “early career theater professionals” (namely Long Wharf interns and promising young staffers) has evolved into an opportunity to present regular children’s shows at the theater. The latest, Loren Swortzell’s The Mischief Makers, directed by Kristianna Smith, begins this weekend.

Remaining performances are today (Saturday the 24th) at 2 p.m., Sunday March 25 at 2 p.m., and Saturday March 31 at 2 p.m. There are also weekday performances for school groups March 27-30 at 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. Suggested donation on the weekends is $5; school shows are free.

The shows based on African, North American and European folk legends, bringing togehter Anansi the trickster spider, Reynard the clever fox and a conniving Raven for a battle of the wills. The cast includes Jenn Mello, Kenneth Murray, Tim Strabers and the ever-radiant Aleta Staton (in photo above).

Basement Hades: Songs of the Underworld

Through March 24 at the Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. (203) 432-1566, www.yalecabaret.org.

Created by the ensemble. Text by Justin A. Taylor. Original music by Daniel Schlosberg. Directed by Ethan Heard. Set design by Edward T. Morris. Costume & puppet designer: Martin Schnellinger. Lighting co-designers: Masha Tsimiring and Yi Zhao. Sound designer: Palmer. Associate sound designer: Keri Klick. Projection designer: Hannah Wasileski. Assistant Projection Designers: Michael Bergmann, Nick Hussong, Paul Lieber. Electronic Granulation Effects: William Gardiner. Technical Director: Jacquelin Deniz Yong. Producer: Kate Ivins. Stage ManagerL Gina Odierno. Performed by Dustin Wills (King Hades/Queen Persephone), Anne Lanzilotti (Orpheus/Violin), Michael Compitello (Orpheus/Percussion), Daniel Schlosberg (Orpheus/Keyboard), Hannah Collins (Orpheus/Cello), Katie McGerr (Eurydice).

It’s a hot time in the Yale Cabaret. Having rushed there for the 11 p.m. Friday show in suit and tie from the oft-stultifying Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner in Hartford, I struggled to keep awake during this intentionally lulling and drifting dreamscape of the netherworld.

My drowsiness is my own problem, not the show’s. Dustin Wills is a peppy interlocutor, narrating the story of Orpheus and Eurydice (a popular legend these days) with a raspy, sassy voice. He’s King Hades himself, interrupted occasionally by a handpuppet Persephone. Hades’ orations lead directly into swirling Saint-Saensesque demonic chamber works composed by Dan Schlosberg, a well-regarded recent Yale grad and current Yale School of Music students who always seems up for a fresh challenge. The musical quartet, which includes Schlosberg on keyboards and ranges from cello solos by Hannah Collins to extraordinary incurstions of vibraphone from percussionist Michael Compitello, goes under the collective name New Morse Code. Given the Orpheus subject matter, it’s more like Remorse Code.

The music is the main attraction, smooth and jazzy and dark with cello, and rather at odds with Wills’ abrasive vocal delivery. Some is original, some riffs on established underworld compositions by Gluck, Shostakovichm Phiilip Glass and Marin Marais. The mood remains remarkably consistent considering the disparate texts and tunes being juggled here.

Overall, what strikes you is that this is that rare bird, an actual cabaret entertainment in the Yale Cabaret. Wills is not far from Joel Grey’s Cabaret master of ceremonies, the New Morse Code musicians (with vocalist Annie Rosen) not far from torch song setters. Elaborate special effects—projections, sound effects—don’t disguise that this is a glorified club-concert piece. It’s an interesting respite from the overly theatricized Cabaret offerings of late, and a welcome introduction to a scarily early spring.

Kate MacCluggage in Darko Tresnjak's production of John Van Druten's Bell, Book and Candle, at the Long Wharf Theatre through April 1. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Bell, Book & Candle

Through April 11 at the Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. (203) 787-4282, www.longwharf.org.

By John Van Druten. Directed by Darko Tresnjak. Set design by Alexander Dodge. Costume design by Fabio Toblin. Lighting design by Matthew Richards. Sound design by Lindsay Jones. Wig design by Tom Watson. Production Stage Manager: Susie Cordon. Assistant Stage Managers: Amy Patricia Stern and Maggie Swing. Casting: James Calleri.

To say the TV series Bewitched was beholden to Bell, Book and Candle isn’t altogether true. John Van Druten’s 1950 play has a magic all its own. The dark kind.

Darko Tresnjak’s production (first done on the West Coast a few years ago, now at Long Wharf and headed to Hartford Stage next month) shows how cleanly the BB&C characters can line up with the beloved 1960s TV sitcom. As winsome witch Gillian Holroyd, Kate MacCluggage—in her second Christmas-themed Long Wharf show in a row, following It’s a Wonderful Life——evokes Elizabeth Montgomery (or at least her hair does; MacCluggage plays the role as a cross between young Katherine Hepburn and young Jane Fonda). Michael Keyloun minces up Gillian’s brother Nicky a la Paul Lynde’s Uncle Arthur on the TV show, while Ruth Williamson’s Aunt Queenie vaguely resembles Agnes Moorhead’s Endora with the dithery wonderment of Marion Lorne’s Aunt Clara. Robert Eli, as the mortal Shepherd Henderson for whom Gillian falls, makes an agreeable Darrin, achieving a curious cross between Tab Hunter and Robert Carradine.

Ruth Williamson and Michael Keyloun as Aunt Queenie and Nicky in Bell, Book & Candle at the Long Wharf. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Not that kids today would get these references. Bewitched was a 1960s show; even the ‘90s reruns on Nickelodeon are now cause for nostalgia, and the series is now just one of zillions accessible on Hulu.com. The 2005 Will Ferrell/Nicole Kidman movie version is best forgotten, except for demonstrating what’s wrong about most witchy comedies and what’s right about Bell, Book and Candle: the smoke and spectacles and trickery can only get you so far. All-powerful characters aren’t funny. They need to have something to lose.

The joke of Bewitched is that a man has married a witch. The set-up in Bell, Book & Candle is that when a witch falls in love, she loses her powers. The play’s real kindred spirit is Noel Coward’s classic Blithe Spirit (done by Long Wharf Theatre in 1998, as it happens), in which the ghost of a man’s ex-wife haunts him and his new bride until they’re all able to move on emotionally to their new circumstances. That’s the real charm of Bell, Book and Candle: watching witches acclimate to their surroundings.

The environment in question is a lavish, splashy red apartment in Greenwich Village. The Village: mysterious hipster hang-out of the 1950s, Gay Liberation birthplace of the 1970s, gentrification mecca of the 1980s and still an enchanted fantasyland today.

Staging Bell, Book & Candle in 2012 (though the production is wisely still set in the “early 1950s”) adds several layers to Van Druten’s already ruffled original. He was writing of witches keeping their community secret at a time when “witch hunts” referred to the McCarthy hearings. Moreover, as Long Wharf Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein points out in his program notes, “Van Druten, a closeted homosexual in a time when homosexuality was a significant taboo and the cause of much personal shame, writes of sexual love between a member of one hidden subculture and the more dominant ‘straight’ culture.”

These subtexts are now overt. The witches’ and warlock’s worries over what will happen to them if they are found out have historical gravity due to the rabid Red-baiting and blacklisting which consumed much of the decade following this play’s premiere.

Michael Keyloun in Bell, Book & Candle. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Brother Nicky is played as if he were out and proud, happy to flaunt his lifestyle to the dishy non-fiction author Sidney Redlitch (Gregor Paslawsky, last seen at Long Wharf as Lenin in Travesties, skewing admirably close to Ernie Kovacs’ portrayal of Redlitch in Bell, Book and Candle’s 1958 movie version). The heterosexual undertones are now overtones too—when Gillian falls for neighbor Shep, sparks don’t just fly; you’re led to believe they’re having wild sex right there on the living room floor.

Gregor Paslawsky as Sidney Redlitch and Robert Eli as Shep Henderson in Bell, Book & Candle at the Long Wharf. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

There’s also a kinder, gentler refrain added to this dischord: an admonition to let beautiful, classy people alone. This is the more recent image of lower West Side New York City; movie stars who take out the trash and hang out at the neighborhood bars and don’t want to be made a fuss over. That desire is in here too.

That’s a lot of depth for a comedy which in its structure and construction is generally unremarkable. There are some sweet one-liners and a brainy quality to the dialogue, but you always know how it will end.

Tresnjak is known for the lush styles in which he upholsters his productions. Here he uses space-age lounge chic to define Gillian’s apartment and lifestyle, from the sleek fireplace to the Yma Sumac mambos in the sound design.

Unfortunately, the pacing of the show doesn’t match the peppy musical soundtrack. The actors take their cues from the predictable drama, not from the clean, brisk tunes (“Santa Baby,” “Witchcraft”) which open and close each scene. Stopping for two intermissions doesn’t help. You constantly brace yourself for big special effects, the kind that theaters routinely do these days with crazy lights and smoke machines and projections, but when the spells are cast they’re underwhelmingly old-school.

Hearkening back to old theater formats and traditions—the leisure, the familiar build-ups to certain conclusions, those two intermissions—while allowing for up-to-date ironies and attitudes, and adding luster from eras in between, makes for disjointed evening in the theater. I’m in favor of the attempt, just wish it had gone a bit further in several respects. I also can’t help niggling at the concept: If you’re so keen to broadcast a gay metaphor at the play’s core, why not make the Gillian character a man?

There is insight and delight to be found in this unearthed piece of 1950s Broadway glitter. But as a magic trick, you can see too easily behind the curtain.

The Holroyd siblings and their Aunt Queenie in Bell, Book & Candle at the Long Wharf. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

The Shubert Theater in New Haven announced its 2012-13 season this week. It’s a nice mix of classics (Les Miserables and West Side Story) and newer shows (Shrek, Addams Family, American Idiot), with an alternative, non-literary event (Blue Man Group) thrown in for good measure.

Two of the shows—Addams Family and Jersey Boys—have scripts by the writing partnership of Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. (Brickman was Woody Allen’s co-screenwriter on Annie Hall, Manhattan, Manhattan Murder Mystery and Sleeper.) Two of the other shows—Shrek and Blue Man Group—have creepy, brightly painted people in them.

As happens a lot, most of these shows have already visited Connecticut—at the Bushnell in Hartford, which due to its size and resources tends to get first dibs on touring Broadway musicals. (The Shubert broke the Bushnell’s tour-premiere streak this past season with Fela!, but generally speaking Hartford’s always first.) I don’t mean that comment to discourage, however: later legs of national tours have their own delights, usually deriving from the familiarity of an ensemble that’s been with a show for a long while coupled with the excitement of a cast change or two in the lead roles. Certain shows, I’ve found, actually benefit from being scaled down in grandeur and scaled up in human energy, more dependent on performances than technical spectacle. Cabaret, Tommy and Hair are examples that spring readily to mind. I’m going to go ahead and predict that American Idiot and West Side Story will seem a different experience, with a different vibe, on the relatively small Shubert stage than it felt elsewhere. If you’ve seen them before, go again.

Details:

Sept. 25 through Oct. 7: The return of the Jersey Boys tour, which had a preview run at the Shubert in 2006 before the national tour even began. (A real coup at the time, the tour was built and rehearsed at the Shubert, then tickets were sold to a couple of public dress rehearsals.) The Jersey Boys tour had its “official” Connecticut premiere at the Bushnell, which hosted the show again just last year. Other Connecticut manifestations of Jersey Boys include performances by The Midtown Men, a concert act made up of the original Broadway leads in the show, at a Long Wharf gala and a Westport Country Playhouse special event.

The Jersey Boys booking gets a full two-week Tuesday-through-Sunday run, something which ALL the shows in the Shubert’s Broadway subscription series used to get not that long ago. Things started changing when CAPA took over management of the space about a decade ago, but well before that, the subscriber base had dwindled to where a two-week run meant an awful lot of empty seats. Jersey Boys is a mammoth hit and seemingly worth hanging around town for a fortnight.

December 28-30: Shrek The Musical. New Haven connection: the character’s creator, children’s book author and New Yorker cartoonist William Steig, attended the Yale School of Fine Arts for a whopping five days back in the 1930s.

Feb. 1-3, 2013: The Addams Family. Andrew Lippa, whose musical The Wild Party has a workshop at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in the late 1990s) did the music and lyrics to Brickman & Elice’s book. There was a nice exhibit of Charles Addams cartoons at the Bruce Museum a couple of years ago.

March 14-17: Blue Man Group. The troupe (one of whose three original members, Chris Wink, attended Wesleyan University) formed in the late 1980s and now has longrunning companies in New York, Boston, Florida, Vegas, Chicago, overseas and on tour, did a major theater tour, titled The Complex, which played the Oakdale in Wallingford in 2003. Members of the Blue Man Group also founded their own pre-K school, the Blue School, in 2008.

April 16-21: Les Miserables. A Broadway smash in 1985, a time when all the smashes were spectacle-based, Les Mis was a difficult show to tour and only played the largest venues. It wasn’t until the early ‘90s that a clever redesign—still using the iconic turntable set—could accommodate smaller, older theaters such as the Shubert. It’s barely been back since. A slew of 25^th anniversary productions worldwide in 2010 included a new tour, which is still carrying on.

May 3-5: American Idiot. Based on the Green Day album, it’s an obvious choice for the “modern rock” slot which is a component of most Broadway subscription series these days. Last year the slot went to another Michael Mayer-directed musical written by a pop star, Spring Awakening. Before that, Rock of Ages and Hair were the prime picks.

May 31-June 2: West Side Story. Like Les Mis, this is an anniversary tour—only the show’s twice as old! Hard to think of West Side Story being 50, or of Rita Moreno being 80. Arthur Laurents, who wrote the script for this mid-20^th century NYC street gang adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, directed this revival, which adds some Spanish-language scenes and lyrics. It was Laurents’ last major project before he died last May at the age of 93. The original Jerome Robbins choreography remains unchanged.

Only way to get tickets for the Shubert 2012-13 Broadway series at this early date is to subscribe (either to the full slate or with a four-show “Flex Subscription”) or by buying a “Free Advance Buyers Membership” for $50. Options are at http://www.shubert.com/presentations/subscriptions

Shubert Box Office is at (203) 562-5666 or 1-888-736-2663.

If you thought the Yale Rep had no thrilling announcements left after the one-two-three-four-five-six punch of its 2012-13 season announcement last Friday… well, ust remember that the 2011-12 season ain’t over yet.

With Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale now in previews and opening to critics this Thursday, the Rep’s announced who’s in its next show, the world premiere of The Realistic Joneses by hotshot contemporary playwright Will Eno—another hotshot contemporary playwright!: Tracy Letts, of August: Osage County Pulitzer-winning fame. Letts acts as well as writes, and does both as an ensemble member of Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

(Other notable sighting of Steppenwolfers at the Rep in recent years include Bruce Norris’ The Unmentionables in 2007 and this year’s production of Christina Anderson’s Good Goods, directed by Steppenwolf ensemble member Tina Landau.)

Also in the four-person Realistic Joneses cast:

Johanna Day, who was in David Adjmi’s The Evildoers at the Rep in 2008; did an earlier Will Eno work, Middletown, at the Vineyard Theatre; and was in the original Vineyard Theatre cast of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive.

Glenn Fitzgerald, who played Hoffman in Tim Blake Nelson’s The Grey Zone at Long Wharf Theatre in 1999, and appeared in such heralded Off Broadway productions as Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero, Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange and Melissa James Gibson’s This.

Oh, and Parker Posey! Parker Posey! Parker Posey! Parker Posey! Parker Posey! Parker Posey! A movie and TV star, yes, but also a consummate ensemble member, as validated by everything from the stage revivals of Hurlyburly and Fifth of July Off Broadway to her film work with Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused) and Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration). I am particular partial to Posey’s turns as a fun-loving librarian in Party Girl and a conniving music-biz magnate in Josie & The Pussycats.

The Realistic Joneses is directed by the busy Sam Gold, whose production of Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar (starring Alan Rickman) is now running on Broadway while his production of John Osborne’s classic Look Back in Anger is at New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company. Gold’s earlier Roundabout success was Tigers Be Still. He’s married to playwright Amy Herzog, the Yale School of Drama grad whose Belleville world-premiered at the Rep this season.

Now, you might be wondering, what’s The Realistic Joneses about? I’m loathe to regurgitate press releases, but with new plays that nobody else has yet described publically, paraphrasing is a fraught exercise. The Rep press release describes the show thus: “Meet Bob and Jennifer (Tracy Letts and Johanna Day), and their new neighbors John and Pony (Glenn Fitzgerald and Parker Posey), two suburban couples who have more in common than their identical homes and the same last name on their mailboxes.”

The Realistic Joneses plays at Yale Rep April 20 through May 12. Opening night in April 26, there are talkbacks on May 3 and at the April 28 and May 5 matinees (the open captioning performance is also May 5 at 2 p.m.), and the “audio description” happens at the May 12 matinee. Tickets range from $20 for April 23-25 previews up to $88 for the best seats on Saturday nights. (203) 432-1234. www.yalerep.org

Paul Giamatti in the movie Ironclad, which is set in more or the less the same century as the first telling of the story which inspired Shakespeare's Hamlet. Paul Giamatti will play the melancholy Dane at the Yale Rep next year.

The Yale Rep has announced its 2012-13 season , and if it was announced two weeks from now I’d assume it was an April Fool’s jest cleverly designed to make me jump for joy and dance in the streets.

It’s an exceptional list of projects, all the more exciting for those of us (and I’ll admit that might be a rather special list) who have a familiarity with aspects of all the projects.

Many of the artists involved—Sarah Ruhl, Les Waters, Bill Camp, Robert Woodruff, David Adjmi, Rebecca Taichman, should be familiar to Repgoers from recent seasons. Others—Culture Clash, Paul Giamatti—haven’t stopped by in a while but did memorable work here before.

This season has breadth and variety and class, yet it also has a tone and a flow, an immediacy if you will, which should please subscribers and others who see the Yale Rep as their local theater and want to attend regularly.

If there’s any sort of linking theme to the far-flung season, it’s something about the relationship between stage and film. One play is about Hollywood’s influence on a small Irish town. Another is fashioned from a screenplay by a German genius who did both theater and movies well. Then there’s Giamatti, a noted film star, returning to his stage roots in the most famous play of all time.

With that urgency apparent—premieres, genre-pushing concepts, wild match-ups of directors and writers and performers—it’s going to be pretty damned hard to wait patiently for some of these shows to happen. The show which will surely suck up most of the press attention, Paul Giamatti as Hamlet, won’t happen until a year from now.

Well, the whole slate is worth the wait. Here it is, with commentary by me. (The Rep’s own take on their season, plus subscription info, is here):

Richard Montoya as he appeared in American Night at the LaJolla Playhouse last year.

Sept. 21-Oct. 13 at the Yale University Theatre: American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose brings elements of the Culture Clash troupe, the groundbreaking Los Angeles Latino comedy/drama ensemble, back to New Haven, where they did a special Elm City-centric edition of their Culture Clash in AmeriCCa revue in 2003.

Culture Clash co-founder Richard Montoya scripted American Night, which is credited as “developed by Culture Clash and Jo Bonney,” the New York director known for her regular collaborations with her husband Eric Bogosian and for her surehanded direction of new works Off Broadway and in the regional theater. Bonney directed Lil’s 80^th at Long Wharf Stage II a few years ago.

Last summer the Oregon Shakespeare Festival used American Night to kick off The United State History Cycle, the festival’s nine-year cycle of dozens on new works based on pivotal moments in American history. American Night’s sold-out success made it the first OST show to rate the adding of extra performances.

Montoya’s a busy guy, continuing to work with his Culture Clash collaborators while also setting up solo writing projects. At the Theatre Communications Group conference in Los Angeles last summer, Montoya was pitching a new urban-realist play he’s workshopping, called Dopplegangers. That show had a small-scale premiere in September and will continue to be developed.

American Night’s playing at the Yale University Theatre, a conventional proscenium space. Casting hasn’t been announced: in the Oregon production, two of the three Culture Clash members—Montoya and Herbert Suiguenza—were in the cast.

A scene from the previous Yale Rep show written by David Adjmi and directed by Rebecca Taichman, The Evildoers.

October 26 through Nov. 17 in the Yale Repertory Theatre space: The world premiere of Marie Antoinette, marking the return of zeitgeist-wrangling playwright David Adjmi to the site of his relationship-drama triumph The Evildoers back in 2008. In the meantime, Adjmi (already a much-hyped new talent when The Evildoers happened) has had Off Broadway acclaim with Elective Affinities and Stunning. Marie Antoinette is a co-production with the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., which gets to premiere this world premiere production first, in September. The director is Yale School of Drama grad Rebecca Taichman, who happened to direct the Rep production of The Evildoers.

Nov. 30 through Dec. 22 at the Yale Rep space: The word premiere of Dear Elizabeth, a new play by Sarah Ruhl. The last time a Ruhl play world-premiered at the Yale Rep, The Clean House as directed by Bill Rausch in 2004 was one of the most magical nights I’ve experienced in that place. Yale has since done several more Ruhl plays—Eurydice, Passion Play, a Yale School of Drama production of Orlando, a Yale Summer Cabaret production of Late: A Cowboy Song, undergrad productions of some of the above plus In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)—but it’s clearly time to launch another new one here. The director is Les Waters, who did Ruhl’s Eurydice at the Rep (a production rooted in an earlier one for Berkeley Rep in California) and also directed Ruhl’s “new version” of Chekhov’s Three Sisters for the Rep at the beginning of the 2011-12 season.

Jan. 25 through Feb. 16 in the Yale Rep space: Stones in His Pockets by Marie Jones, directed by Evan Yionoulis. A fascinating programming choice, since this script has been downgraded over the years to harmless community theater folderol. But I happened to see the show when it was first gaining international acclaim around 2000

Devised in Ireland in the late 1990s, Stones in His Pocket seemed ideal for the Edinburgh Festival, where it played in 1999, because of its two-person, multi-character cast and antic misbehavior. But it caught on much bigger than that, playing for three years in London’s West End, coming to Broadway in 2001, touring in a number of configurations and, once the rights trickled down to amateur and college companies, becoming a small-theater sensation. Director Evan Yionoulis, who actively rethinks and reinterprets any script she comes into contact with, is most commonly associated with heavy dramas —for the Rep, she’s done Shakespeare’s Richard II, Ibsen’s The Master Builder,  Brecht’s Galileo and the 2010 world premiere of Kirsten Greenidge’s Bossa Nova. But she showed great instincts for broad comedy with her 2004 Rep production of Carlo Gozzi’s The King Stag. And I think her finest hour at the Rep was with the extremely coarse and extremely funny and extremely violent and just plain extreme George Walker play Heaven in 2000. There’s definitely a dark side to Stones in His Pockets, as foretold in the play’s very title, though it’s mostly a knockabout farce about a Hollywood film crew taking over a small Irish town and trying to heighten its “authenticity.” The beauty of the show is that two actors handle over a dozen roles between them. As a professor in the Yale School of Drama, Yionoulis knows how to work with actors; I’m suspecting Yionoulis has some great new ideas for this underappreciated script. Stones in His Pockets is has a shot at becoming a small-cast, high-energy, humble-beginnning regional theater hit along the lines of Charles Ludlam’s powerhouse The Mystery of Irma Vep.

March 15 through April 13 in the University Theater: Hamlet, starring Paul Giamatti, directed by James Bundy. When Paul Giamatti visited New Haven last April to accept the first “Louis” award from Mory’s restaurant, he reminisced about the shows he did as a Yale undergrad and as a grad student at the Yale School of Drama. What would it take, someone asked, for this celebrated film actor to return to the legitimate stage? “A whole lot of money,” Giamatti joked.

Now, I imagine the Yale can find a whole lot of money when it needs to, but I don’t think this is about that. I think it’s about Giamatti getting to play Hamlet, and reconnecting with James Bundy, who graduated from the Yale School of Drama directing program a year after Giamatti got his degree from its acting program. Bundy is of course now the Dean of the School of Drama, not to mention Artistic Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre who still regularly directs plays there, the most recent being the all-star A Delicate Balance revival and the all-African-American Death of a Salesman which starred Charles Dutton.

I was a fervent Paul Giamatti fan back in those hallowed early ‘90s—extraordinary times for the school, with Sanaa Lathan, Mercedes Herrero and Stephen DeRosa also on campus then). I remember how annoyed I got years later when Giamatti got a supporting role in Saving Private Ryan and Entertainment Weekly suggested that he’d be an unlikely choice for leading-man roles. A stupid remark, not only deemed ridiculous by Giamatti’s later successes in American Splendor, Sideways and John Adams, but already at that point a pointless remark since I had personally seen Giamatti excel onstage as Peer Gynt in Peer Gynt, as the lead journey in Carlo Gozzi’s fantasy odyssey Love of Three Oranges,  and in a killer presentation of Chekhov’s The Bear directed by the legendary Earle Gister at the Yale Cabaret. Oh, Giamatti could be an excellent supporting player too, doing Jacques (“All the world’s a stage…”) in As You Like It on the Yale Rep stage in 1994.

I can hear the naysayers already: “Isn’t he too old to play Hamlet?” Nah. Giamatti is 45. Maybe he’s too old to play Romeo, but the idea of Hamlet as a fresh kid straight out of college is just one common concept of the character, not the definitive model. I’ve seen some pretty old Hamlets. Kevin Kline was 43 when he did Hamlet at the Public Theater in 1990, and few complained. Likewise, when John Barrymore did his psychologically groundbreaking Hamlet in 1922, he was 40 and stayed with the role for several more years. Besides, this is our first chance to see Paul Giamatti as Hamlet ever. If he’s doing it now, we should see it.

Hamlet will be next season’s designated “Will Power” production, meaning school groups will get to see and discuss it. (This year’s “Will Power” show is A Winter’s Tale; the “Will” in “Will Power” is a pun on Shakespeare’s first name).

April 26 through May 18 at the Yale Rep: The last show  of the season is the world premiere of a new stage version of In Einem Jahr mit 13 Monden (In a Year With 13 Moons), the 1978  film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It’s directed by Robert Woodruff and stars Bill Camp, the co-adaptors who brought you Notes from Underground a couple of seasons ago. Woodruff also directed the mesmerizing stage version of the Ingmar Bergman film Persona a last season.

Like Bergman, Fassbinder was an accomplished theater artist who never entirely forsook theater for film. He wrote incessantly for both mediums, and had a loyal ensemble of actors and designers who followed him anywhere.

In Einem Jahr mit 13 Monden had special meaning for Fassbinder, a gay man and something of an artistic tyrant. The film was a way of coming to terms with the suicide of Fassbinder’s lover, Armin Meier, who appeared in nearly a dozen of the director’s film and TV projects. (Maier also inspired another key Fassbinder film, 1975’s Fox & His Friends.) Einem Jahr mit 13 Monden concerns a man who has undergone a sex change and is despondently revisiting places where s/he grew up, including a slaughterhouse and an orphanage.

And that’s it. The whole glorious Yale Rep season. No “To Be Announced” slots. No fuzzy concepts with working titles. No obvious “I’ll believe it when I see it” longshots. A remarkable, rich, wide-ranging and potentially even revolutionary season, full of confident artists who continue to blast new trails and would rather die than get complacent. The Rep is their laboratory, and we get to watch the colorful explosions.