Looking back, going forward

Play by play: January 8, 2010

Theater

Play by Play: January 1, 2010

OPENING

ALL MY SONS | The Huntington Theatre Company starts off the new year with Arthur Miller's New York Drama Critics' Circle Award–winning 1947 drama about a businessman who prospered in World War II by selling plane-engine parts to the armed forces but harbors an ugly secret. Will Lyman plays the troubled Joe Keller; Karen MacDonald is his adamant wife, Kate; Lee Aaron Rosen plays their younger son, Chris; and Diane Davis is the woman Chris is planning to marry — a woman who was formerly engaged to the Kellers' elder son, Larry, who's MIA. David Esbjornson directs. | Boston University Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston | 617.266.0800 | January 8–February 7 | Curtain 7:30 pm [no January 19] Tues | 2 pm [January 20, February 3] + 7:30 pm [7 pm January 13] Wed | 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 2 pm [no January 9] + 8 pm Sat | 2 pm [no January 10] + 7 pm [January 10, 24] Sun | $20-$82.50

FABULOSO | John Kolvenbach's play is about what happens to a vaguely disappointing marriage when a couple of maniacs show up at the door insisting they're family. Once the light dawns that this wild ride is in fact a comic metaphor for the bedlam that comes with having children, the play seems both clever and rather sweet. It got its world premiere from Wellfleet Harbor Actors' Theater last year; now it turns up at Merrimack Repertory Theatre, with Jeremiah Wiggins and Rebecca Harris as Teddy and Kate, the couple in the one-bedroom apartment, and Ed Jewett and Amy Kim Waschke as Arthur and Samantha; Kyle Fabel directs. | Merrimack Repertory Theatre, 132 Warren St, Lowell | 978.654.4MRT | January 7-31 | Curtain 2 pm [January 13] + 7:30 pm Wed | 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 4 pm [no January 9] + 8 pm Sat | 2 + 7 pm [no evening January 31] Sun | $26-$56

GATZ | The American Repertory Theater presents the theater troupe Elevator Repair Service in its 2004 tour de force take on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby ("James Gatz — that was really, or at least legally, his name"), in which "the ensemble brings to life every word of the novel with no text added and none removed." The set-up has an employee in a low-rent office space stumbling on a tattered old copy of Gatsby and starting to read it aloud; his co-workers pay no attention — at first. The piece was conceived as a six-hour entity; here it'll be presented in two parts, and when both parts are performed on the same day, there'll be an hour-long dinner break. With Scott Shepherd as Nick, Victoria Vazquez as Daisy, Jim Fletcher as Gatz, and Gary Wilmes as Tom; ERS founder John Collins directs. | Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St, Cambridge | 617.547.8300 | January 7–February 7 | Curtain 3 + 7:30 pm Mon [January 18: P1/P2] | 7:30 pm Tues [January 12: P1; February 2: P1] | 7:30 pm Wed [January 27: P1; February 3: P2] | 7:30 pm Thurs [January 7: P1; January 21: P1; January 28: P2] | 3 pm [P1; no January 7 or 14] + 7:30 pm [P2; January 8 P1] Fri | 3 pm [P1] + 7:30 pm [P2] Sat-Sun | $25-$75; $15-$65 seniors; $20 student rush

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