Curtain Is Up on the New Theater Season

After a long summer lull, the 2005-06 season in Fairfax County theater is revving up, promising a mix of old (some might even say musty) favorites and ambitious works. One of the county's two professional theater companies is successfully reemerging from a fallow period, while the other one is saying goodbye .

With the competition to attract audiences growing ever more intense, several well-established groups are playing it safe by offering familiar plays and musicals. However, there is also enough new or challenging material on the calendar to interest patrons looking for something more adventuresome:

Theater of The First Amendment

This weekend, the professional Theater of the First Amendment ( http://www.gmu.edu/cfa/tfa ) is wrapping up its run of "Three Hotels," Jon Robin Baitz's two-character drama, after receiving generally positive reviews. The show is performed at George Mason University's Harris Theater, a 500-seat venue with a traditional proscenium and a thrust stage that Theater of the First Amendment hopes will be its steady home as it eases back into producing a regular roster of shows.

In January, Theater of the First Amendment will premiere "Lift: Icarus and Me," a new musical from Mary Hall Surface and David Maddox, a talented team who previously created "Sing Down the Moon," "Nathan the Wise," "Perseus Bayou" and "Odyssey of Telemaca." For "Lift: Icarus and Me," Hall and Surface have once again turned to the classics for their inspiration, this time the myth of the high-flying Icarus and his inventor-father, Daedalus. Transplanted from ancient Greece to the arid expanses of East Texas, this version of the fable features ragtime and Texas swing music and rodeos.

The Center Company

The Center Company, a professional theater company in residence at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, will remain dark, disappointing theatergoers who have appreciated the Fairfax-based group's mix of thought-provoking and carefully staged plays over the years. Turnover in management and other commitments are taking the time of the artistic director. As a result, the troupe will be dormant indefinitely, perhaps permanently.

McLean Drama Company

A new semiprofessional group, McLean Drama Company, plans a low-profile season, waiting until June to debut a new play from McLean playwright Rachel Bail called "Lady Macbeth."

Bail's concept is that the scheming widow was not a murderess but actually a loyal Scotswoman, based on a strong genealogical claim to the throne. "Lady Macbeth" will have a brief run, June 16-18 at the McLean Community Center's Alden Theatre. The group is also holding two 10-minute-play contests, one for high school students in McLean, the other for high school students throughout Fairfax County. The deadline for entries is Jan. 1. Three winning plays in each category will be given a reading.

Elden Street Players

The area's busiest and most consistently satisfying theater company, the Elden Street Players of Herndon, is preparing a season full of its trademark combination of groundbreaking, edgy dramas, raucous comedies and new musicals. Its season opens Oct. 28 with young Irish playwright Conor McPherson's "The Weir," a trio of ghost stories set in a gloomy pub nestled in the remote Irish countryside, with the wind howling outside, of course.

That's all a lot of fun, but in January, the cast will challenge its audiences with the work of the often-inscrutable Tom Stoppard, who is never more enigmatic than with his surreal "The Invention of Love." The subject is English poet A.E. Housman, who is newly deceased as the audience meets him here and is being rowed along the river Styx by Charon, the mythological Greek ferryman of the dead. The drama veers back and forth between 1936, when Housman died, and his days as a young man at Oxford. Unfathomable? Certainly. But it is also filled with elegant discourse on how tenuous life is and how challenging it is to comprehend intangible truth.

After allowing audiences a suitable rest, the Elden Street Players ( http://www.eldenstreetplayers.org ) return to the Industrial Strength Theatre in March with Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Three Tall Women," a sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant reflection on life by a woman in her nineties. It's on to wild comedy in June with "The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged)," which does for the Bible what "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)," a huge hit for Elden Street in 2004, did for the Bard. And they'll top off the season in July with "Blood Brothers," a little-known musical by Willy Russell telling the story of twins who were separated at birth and live quite different lives until fate reunites them.

The Elden Street Players also have a full schedule of shows for young audiences, including "The Emperor's New Clothes," in November, "Rapunzel" in February, "Something Different 2006" in April and "Alice in Wonderland" in June.

Reston Community Players

The Reston Community Players ( http://www.restonplayers.org ) have the first community theater offering on the stage this season, with their lavish production of "Disney's Beauty and the Beast," now in mid-run at CenterStage theater at the Reston Community Center at Hunters Woods.