Compared with the clamor of the spring theatre season, summer is quiet and peaceful. But New York won’t be sleepy, not by any means. For one of the year’s most anticipated international imports, the Park Avenue Armory welcomes back the British director Robert Icke (of last year’s “Hamlet”), who brings “The Doctor” (beginning June 3), his adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s “Professor Bernhardi,” from 1912. The thorny ethical drama stars Juliet Stevenson as a Jewish doctor, who is pilloried after she refuses a priest’s request to administer last rites. Another overseas visitor is “Good Vibrations” (Irish Arts Center, June 14), the Lyric Theatre Belfast’s production of Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson’s seventies-set musical, which uses songs from Northern Ireland’s punk era to spread the good (or, rather, loud) word.
The Public’s Shakespeare in the Park offers only a single production this year: a modern-day “Hamlet” (Delacorte, June 8), starring Ato Blankson-Wood, directed by Kenny Leon. Blankson-Wood, who was nominated for a Tony for his performance in Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play,” reveals a particular electric vulnerability onstage; it will be thrilling to see what he does with Hamlet’s fever pitch. And what was the last time that Tennessee Williams’s “Orpheus Descending” (Polonsky Shakespeare Center, July 9) was given a serious New York production? The glittering Maggie Siff (“Mad Men,” “Billions”) stars in the superheated Southern drama at Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience, where she scorched the boards as Beatrice in “Much Ado About Nothing,” in 2013—it’s a welcome return on several fronts.
Broadway, of course, marches on. The most edifying opening this summer may well be “Here Lies Love” (Broadway Theatre, June 17), an immersive musical by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim that originated at the Public, about the Filipino politician Imelda Marcos’s rise to power. The director Alex Timbers and the choreographer Annie-B Parson will get audiences dancing—an experience meant to fuse the ecstasy of the club with demagogic delirium. Off and Off Off Broadway bubble with innovative projects as well, particularly “The Whitney Album” (May 24), a meditation on Whitney Houston by the movement-forward theatre-maker Jillian Walker, which closes the SoHo Rep’s season. And the Tony-nominated playwright Lucas Hnath mounts “A Simulacrum” (Atlantic Stage 2, May 25), in which he examines the craft of the sleight-of-hand expert Steve Cuiffo, his longtime collaborator. The details of the show are—as you might expect—being kept very close to the vest. ♦
