Virginia Stage Company Announces 2017-18 Season
Three classic works of literature take the stage and a favorite gospel musical returns for the upcoming season.
BY AMERICAN THEATRE EDITORS
NORFOLK, VA.: Virginia Stage Company (VSC) has announced its 2017–18 season, the theatre’s 39th, which will include a Pulitzer Prize winner, musicals, and adaptations of three classic works of literature.
The season opens with Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash (Sept. 13-Oct. 1), a jukebox musical in which three multi-generational couples see their lives unfold through more than two-dozen of Cash’s iconic hits.
Up next will be The Parchman Hour: Song and Stories of the ’61 Freedom Riders (Oct. 25-Nov. 12). Adapted from real life accounts, The Parchman Hour shares the struggle of the first Freedom Riders through music by Bob Dylan and spirituals of the time.
For the holidays will be the annual production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (Dec. 6-24), adapted by Patrick Mullins.
Following that will be another classic, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (Jan. 17-Feb. 4, 2018), adapted by Joseph Hanreddy and J.R. Sullivan.
Next up will be a spoof of The Hound of the Baskervilles follows (Feb. 21-March 11, 2018), adapted by Steven Canny and John Nicholson from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel. Three actors play more than 20 characters in this comedic version of the Sherlock Holmes tale.
After that will be the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced (April 4-22, 2018), by Ayad Akhtar, about the conversations that unfold at an Upper East Side party hosted by an American-born and Muslim-raised lawyer and his Jewish wife.
Closing out the season will be the return of gospel musical Crowns (May 9-27, 2018). Adapted by Regina Taylor from the book by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry, this is a story of love, sisterhood, and hats.
Founded in 1968, VSC is southeastern Virginia’s only professional nonprofit resident theatre, with a commitment to producing new work and engaging with the community.