2023 Season

THEATRE ARLINGTON’S 50th ANNIVERSARY SEASON*

February 10 – March 5, 2023

The Mother of All Musicals!
Regarded by many theatre professionals as the finest musical ever created, Gypsy is the ultimate tale of an ambitious stage mother fighting for her daughters’ success – while secretly yearning for her own. Set all across America in the 1920s and 30s, when vaudeville was dying and burlesque was born, Arthur Laurents’ landmark show explores the world of two-bit show business with brass, humor, heart, and sophistication.

The celebrated score by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim boasts one glorious hit after another, including: “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” “Let Me Entertain You,” “Some People,” “You’ll Never Get Away from Me,” “If Momma Was Married,” “All I Need Is the Girl,” “You Gotta Get A Gimmick,” “Small World” and “Together Wherever We Go.”


March 31 – April 16, 2023

Called “the funniest farce ever written,” Noises Off presents a manic menagerie of itinerant actors rehearsing a flop called Nothing’s On. Doors slamming, on and offstage intrigue, and an errant herring all figure in the plot of this hilarious and classically comic play.


May 5 – 21, 2023

This is the love story of Ethel and Norman Thayer, who are returning to their summer home on Golden Pond for the forty-eighth year. He is a retired professor, nearing eighty, with heart palpitations and a failing memory—but still as tart-tongued, observant and eager for life as ever. Ethel, ten years younger, and the perfect foil for Norman, delights in all the small things that have enriched and continue to enrich their long life together. They are visited by their divorced, middle-aged daughter and her dentist fiancé, who then go off to Europe, leaving his teenage son behind for the summer. The boy quickly becomes the “grandchild” the elderly couple have longed for, and as Norman revels in taking his ward fishing and thrusting good books at him, he also learns some lessons about modern teenage awareness—and slang—in return. In the end, as the summer wanes, so does their brief idyll, and in the final, deeply moving moments of the play, Norman and Ethel are brought even closer together by the incidence of a mild heart attack. Time, they know, is now against them, but the years have been good and, perhaps, another summer on Golden Pond still awaits.


June 16 – July 2, 2023

A star-crossed prophecy. Two charming sisters and a luckless sandwich maker. A lot of music. Just not a lot of light. In this darkly comic rock-fable, a melancholy sandwich maker’s humdrum life is intersected by two entrancing sisters. A sweeping ode to young love set against the backdrop of the Northeast blackout of 1965, Fly By Night is a tale about making your way and discovering hope in a world beset by darkness.


July 21 – August 6, 2023

Arthur Przybyszewski owns a decrepit donut shop in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago. Franco Wicks, a black teenager who is his only employee, wants to change the shop for the better. This comedy-drama by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tracy Letts explores the challenges of embracing the past and the redemptive power of friendship.


August 25 – September 10, 2023

A puppet-filled comedy follows a group of twenty-somethings seeking their purpose in big-city life.

The laugh-out-loud musical tells the timeless story of a recent college grad named Princeton, who moves into a shabby New York apartment all the way out on Avenue Q. He soon discovers that, although the residents seem nice, it’s clear that this is not your ordinary neighborhood. Together, Princeton and his new-found friends struggle to find jobs, dates and their ever-elusive purpose in life.


Filled with gut-busting humor and a delightfully catchy score, not to mention puppets, Avenue Q is a truly unique show that has quickly become a favorite for audiences everywhere. Although the show addresses humorous adult issues, it is similar to a beloved children’s show; a place where puppets are friends, Monsters are good and life lessons are learned.
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October 6 – 15, 2023

An estranged bi-racial couple must confront their feelings about race and bias after their son is detained by the local police following a traffic stop incident. Their disparate histories and backgrounds inform their assumptions as they try to find out what happened to their son.


ALL-YOUTH MUSICAL

 November 3 – 12, 2023

Take a fantastic musical adventure with an out-of-this-world car that flies through the air and sails the seas. Based on the record-breaking West End production and the beloved film, and featuring an unforgettable score by the Sherman Brothers (Mary Poppins), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang JR. is one blockbuster that audiences will find “Truly Scrumptious.”


Eccentric inventor, Caractacus Potts, sets about restoring an old race car with the help of his children Jeremy and Jemima. They soon discover the car is magic, and has the ability to float and take flight. When the evil Baron Bomburst desires the magic car for himself, the family joins forces with Truly Scrumptious and Grandpa Potts to outwit the dastardly Baron and Baroness and their villainous henchman, the Child Catcher.


December 1 – 17, 2023

It’s Christmas Eve, and with the actors snowed in and unable to make it to the studios of WXMS for the live radio performance of A Christmas Carol, the sound effects person decides to take the audience through the classic tale himself. In an impressive and amusing feat, this telling is performed as a 1940s radio play with one person providing all of the characters’ voices and sound effects. This rollicking, creative adaptation of Dickens’ classic work is sure to warm the hearts of even the chilliest audience members.

*All rights pending – Subject to change

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