In 1952, Agatha Christie’s murder mystery drama, The Mousetrap, opened in the West End of London. Ten years later, Wayne State University opened the Hilberry Theatre, the nation’s only graduate theatre company staffed by young up-and-coming professionals with a rotating repertory schedule.
It seems appropriate that the Hilberry will open its 50th anniversary season with The Mousetrap, a play that has been pleasing crowds non-stop since its auspicous opening all those years ago. The Hilberry has a pretty solid reputation of delighting audiences here in Motown, and we've no doubt that the next 50 years will prove just as strong.
The Hilberry Theatre announced a 2012-13 season billed as, “a breathtaking blend of shows that take us around the world to celebrate the Hilberry’s milestone season.”
Subscriptions are on sale beginning March 1, 2012, at prices as low as $102 for a six-show package, making the Hilberry Theatre one of the best deals around for some of Detroit’s best live theatre.
In addition to The Mousetrap, the new season includes:
Othello
The rapid ascent of the powerful Othello and his breathtaking whirlwind marriage to the beautiful Desdemona is thrilling to watch, but it’s the twisted Iago who captures our imagination. The ultimate story of betrayal as only Shakespeare can tell it.
Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)
Deliberately scheduled to follow Othello, this play combines two Shakespearean tragedies to come up with a new comedy. It’s the story of one mousy professor, suffering from unrequited love, who tries to prove that Shakespeare had prepared different, comic endings for two of his most famous plays – Othello and Romeo and Juliet.
A Doctor In Spite of Himself
Bursting with Moliere’s slapstick physical comedy, naughty innuendo, and irreverent hijinks, “playing doctor” takes on new meaning as an intense marital squabble, with an alcoholic woodcutter posing as a doctor, escalates into comic pandemonium. Ultimately, only love can heal the wounded heart.
Marriage
This Russian comedy by Nikolai Gogol is a poetic, fractured fairy tale about the business of marriage. A town matchmaker and a newly betrothed busybody match wits in an intense race to marry off a suitor with cold feet. One bride, four men, two matchmakers and one family are seduced into the calamity that ensues and it is anybody’s guess whether the bride will make it to the altar.
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade
More simply billed as Marat/Sade,by Peter Weiss, this play is set in Charenton, France's insane asylum that was famous in its day both for the humane treatment of its inmates and its assortment of celebrity inmates. In this fact-based play-within-a-play, the Marquis de Sade (the libertine and author of errotic fiction) directs fellow inmates in an intense re-creation of the breathtaking murder of the revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat.
If you are interested in subscribing to this terrific theater package, plan to attend a preview performance of the Hilberry’s 50th anniversary season, along with previews of The Crucible and Bat Boy: The Musical (from the Bonstelle Theatre’s season) on March 25, 2012 at the 7th Annual Subscriber Party and Open House. Doors open at noon, with the performance starting at 2 p.m. Admission is free and the event is open to the general public. Attendees will be provided with light refreshments, interactions with company members and tours of the theatre and production center. Free gifts will be given to those who subscribe or renew and long-term subscribers will be recognized.
To subscribe to this historic 50th Anniversary season, call (313) 577-2972 or visit the Wayne State University Theatre Box Office at 4743 Cass Avenue beginning March 1, 2012. Check out the WSU Department of Theatre website for more information.
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