N.Va. Theater Groups Playing It Safe This Season

Battered by an economy that is keeping some theater lovers home, Northern Virginia companies are kicking off their 2009-10 season. Many have suffered a falloff in ticket sales and are fighting to lure customers with a mix of new works and tried-and-true favorites.

At least 34 theater groups are staging plays in Alexandria and Arlington, Fairfax and Prince William counties, a combination of professional companies and community-based organizations. The companies include the nationally recognized Signature Theatre in Arlington, semiprofessional volunteer groups and smaller amateur troupes.

This unusually high concentration of stage offerings makes competition for theatergoers intense, particularly when potential audience members are being extra careful with discretionary income. That poses special challenges to two new theater companies in Fairfax that do not have a longtime customer base.

Lack of performance venues is a continuing problem that forced one longtime Arlington theater company to relocate to the District. And the Prince William Little Theatre is apparently scrambling to find a home for the coming season.

Signature, which won a Tony Award this year as an outstanding regional theater, is leading the pack by carefully mixing old and new works. It got a jump on the season by opening "Dirty Blonde" in the middle of last month, when most area stages were dark. The show, an affectionate look at the life of actress Mae West, runs into next month.

With two stages at its Shirlington complex, Signature has a second show ready to open next Thursday, the world premiere of the musical revue "First You Dream: The Music of Kander & Ebb." Six Broadway performers present songs from 15 of the celebrated songwriting duo's shows and movies, including "Cabaret" and "Chicago." The show is thus new but familiar, a safe bet Signature is continuing with its next production, an updated version of the 1927 musical "Show Boat."

Later in the season, Signature will try out what it is calling "a new environmental staging" of the musical "Sweeney Todd." Signature will also present a world premiere musical called "Sycamore Trees," a look at a family's struggles adapting to life in post-World War II suburbia.

Local audiences will have to adapt to life without the Keegan Theatre, which had been based in Arlington for years. The group, which specializes in the works of Irish playwrights and American classics, is moving all of its shows to the Church Street Theater in the District's Dupont Circle neighborhood. This comes after years spent shuffling among a number of suburban venues, including the tiny Theater on the Run and the Gunston Arts Center, both in Arlington.

Keegan's move opens space for the American Century Theater, which specializes in rarely produced works of 20th-century American playwrights. American Century will add performances at Theater on the Run and continue at the Gunston Arts Center.

Washington Shakespeare Company will be staying in the Arlington area, moving next year from the decaying Clark Street Playhouse, which is slated for demolition, into a new, county-created arts center at the former Newseum site in Rosslyn. The troupe, which puts edgy spins on classic material, has been in the former warehouse for 14 seasons and is facing a daunting fundraising challenge for its new home. It will take at least $300,000 to outfit and run a theater in what is to be called Arts Space for Everyone.

True to form, WSC has just opened "Camille," a campy, played-in-drag adaptation of a classic novel focused on a Parisian courtesan. Its season will grow more mainstream, ending with the traditional Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur comedy "The Front Page" in June.

"The Front Page" is also on the early-spring calendar for Arlington's Port City Playhouse, which has been attracting smallish audiences in recent seasons despite some critically accomplished work. Its calendar this season leans on familiar, oft-staged shows, including Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," which opens Oct. 30, and the courtroom drama "Nuts," which starts in January. Port City will also stage "Abandonment" in late spring, a sophisticated blend of comedy, mystery and family drama.