September/October 2005

Come Out and Play

Presenting ... All the Must-See Performances of the New and Exciting Theater Season

By Montague Gammon III

In the ABC of Hampton Roads stages, A stands for The American Theatre, that beautifully renovated vaudeville and movie house that brings important international talent to the small Hampton neighborhood of Phoebus, just across the HRBT from Norfolk.

B is for Broadway at Chrysler Hall, presenting touring pros in big-name musicals and comedies. This successful business of showy productions wows multitudes of seat-filling patrons and helps guarantee downtown Norfolk remains the region’s theatrical center.

C is first for the community and collegiate theaters, a special hallmark of Hampton Roads performing arts. A quick count tallies at least seven different community troupes, just as many college programs, one family theatre that started out as a youth group and a region-wide secondary school program with quality that often surpasses anything short of the fully professional stuff. Not coincidentally, our schools and amateur companies routinely propel promising young performers toward thriving careers in New York and Hollywood.

C also stands for Christopher Newport University, with a highly praised educational theatre program now housed in the new Ferguson Performing Arts Center. Beyond being home to the CNU players, the Ferguson will present a series of touring performances of all sorts, perhaps putting it in competition with The American Theatre and Broadway at Chrysler Hall.

After C, this neat alphabetical order breaks down, though the richness of local theatre continues.

Venues such as Norfolk’s Generic Theater, the Virginia Musical Theatre in Virginia Beach, the recently founded Playwrights Premiere Theatre in Williamsburg and the 40th Street Stage—the new Norfolk home of the once peripatetic Elizabeth River Theatre Company—all variously blur the lines between the categories of professional, avocational and educational theatre.

Generic, one time the radical upstart on the local theatre scene, turns 25 this January under the guidance of a new artistic director, Eileen Boarman. Her commitment to innovation and new play development is very much in line with Generic’s description of itself as the “off Broadway” house of Hampton Roads. Boarman has done top-notch work as a graduate student at Regent University and is a veteran of professional repertory theatres.

Though Generic is still a place to find top-quality scripts that have yet to become household names, its position as the innovative enfant terrible among local troupes is under siege by the 40th Street Stage, where everything from small musical revues to performance art can be on the bill. The resident Elizabeth River Theatre Company has already, in its brief history, earned a rep for intensely acted, quality shows.

Once resident in the departed Virginia Beach Pavilion, The Virginia Musical Theatre will take a presumably temporary home at the Contemporary Arts Center for its productions of American musicals that augment local casts with full-time professional leads from New York. Producer and founder Jeff Meredith’s company is even more of an institutional survivor than are most theatres, and Meredith has shown himself to be one of the most savvy, clear eyed, and perceptive stage practitioners.

New York pros Robert Ruffin and Mary Watkins co-founded the Playwrights Premiere Theatre in 2002 with the purpose of giving new scripts fully realized, professional-quality productions and have heard lots of kudos for their initial efforts. This year they apply their impressive professional background to a full season that mingles new works with fresh productions of small-cast, established favorites.

Of course, every theatre can reinvent itself with each new production it stages or presentation it imports. Nonetheless, some theatrical events seem especially noteworthy.

For the rest of this story, including extensive theater listings for this season, see the September/October 2005 issue of Hampton Roads Magazine, currently available on newsstands.