AMERICAN IDIOT Green Day’s hit-album-turned-hit-Broadway show comes to the Opera House January 24-29. |
AMERICAN IDIOT | Broadway Across America | January 24-29 | Michael Mayer helms the Broadway tour of the hit rock-opera version of Green Day's multi-platinum record American Idiot; the show includes little dialogue, relying almost entirely on the album's songs to paint the picture of three young men growing up in post-9/11 America.
Opera House, 539 Washington St, Boston | $20-$130 | 866.523.7469 or boston.broadway.com
THE LEARNED LADIES | Shakespeare & Company | February 3–March 25 | S&Co.'s founding artistic director Tina Packer heads up one of Moliére's most famous satires of pretentious upper-class society in 17th-century France.
Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 70 Kemble St, Lenox | $25-$49 | 866.811.4111 or shakespeare.org
MEDEA | Actors' Shakespeare Project | February 8–March 4 | David R. Gammons takes on Euripides's classic Greek tragedy about adultery, betrayal, and — perhaps most infamously — cannibalism. Company member Jennie Israel stars as the titular terrible mother, alongside Sarah Newhouse, Siobhan Brown, Joel Colodner, McCaela Donovan, Adam Freeman, Nigel Gore, Obehi Janice, Grant McDermott, and Jackson Wagner.
Multicultural Arts Center of Cambridge, 41 Second St, Cambridge | $28-$50 | 866.811.4111 or actorsshakespeareproject.org
DADDY LONG LEGS | Merrimack Repertory Theatre | February 9–March 4 | Charles Towers stages this new musical by Paul Gordon and John Caird, based on the novel by Jean Webster (also the source of the 1955 film musical with Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron), a coming-of-age tale about a young orphaned woman in 1912 New England.
Merrimack Repertory Theatre, 50 East Merrimack Street, Lowell | $25-$32 | 978.654.4678 or merrimackrep.org
PHOTOGRAPH 51 | Nora Theatre Company | February 9–March 4 | Anna Ziegler's play, winner of the 2008 STAGE International Script Competition for Best New Play About Science & Technology, follows the unsung triumphs and struggles of British biophysicist Rosalind Franklin, who took part in the 1950s-era project to map the DNA molecule. Daniel Gidron directs.
Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge | $15-$40 | 866.811.4111 or centralsquaretheater.org
WILD SWANS | American Repertory Theater | February 11–March 11 | Sacha Wares directs the Alexandra Wood theatrical adaptation of Jung Chang's book about the rise of Communism in 20th-century China and Mao's Cultural Revolution. This first-ever stage version of the story will also feature video footage by Beijing film artist Wang Gongxin.
Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St, Cambridge | $25-$65 | 617.547.8300 or americanrepertorytheater.org
BAKERSFIELD MIST | New Repertory Theatre | February 26–March 18 | Jeff Zinn directs this rolling world premiere of Stephen Sachs's comedy about a chain-smoking trailer-park bartender who buys a thrift store painting and discovers that the piece could be worth real money. This production, after a successful run at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre last summer, returns to the stage with the same cast: Paula Langton as the lucky thrifter and Ken Cheeseman as the dubious art expert hired to appraise the painting.
Black Box Theater at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal St, Watertown | $35 | 617.923.8487 or newrep.org
