Bristol Riverside Theatre (BRT) begins its 38th season at The Regency Room, 190 Mifflin St., Bristol, an intimate 150-seat venue with up close and personal views, ample on-site free parking, a bar and concessions.
Two entrances for the space, one on Mifflin Street and the ADA-accessible entrance at the rear of the building, accommodate guests while Bristol Riverside Theatre’s main venue, 120 Radcliffe St., Bristol, undergoes a multi-million-dollar renovation and facelift.
The season opens with D.L. Colburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “The Gin Game,” in a production reuniting Keith Baker and Penelope Reed. Baker was the artistic director of BRT and Reed the producing artistic director of Hedgerow Theatre, each for nearly 30 years. In this production they reunite as Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey, roles made famous by Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, in a touching story about friendship, isolation, and aging.
BRT welcomes back Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Jon Marans (“Old Wicked Song”) to direct. Running Sept. 10 to 29, the play tells the story of two elderly acquaintances locked in increasingly competitive rounds of Gin Rummy.
For the season’s second show, BRT presents David Ives’ tale about an uninhibited actress who weasels her way into an audition just when the director is ready to end the day. “Venus in Fur” received a Tony nomination for Best Play of 2012. This stage adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novel depicts dissatisfied writer-director Thomas Novachek in a feverish search for the perfect actress to star in his play’s leading role as Vanda von Dunayev. As the audition progresses an entanglement ensues that shifts power dynamics and challenges the director’s tainted ideas about sex and women. The show performs Oct. 22 to Nov. 10.
The season continues back in BRT’s newly renovated theater at 120 Radcliffe St. in January with a ribbon-cutting welcoming guests to the fully revamped auditorium renamed the John Martinson Theatre. The new theater will have enhanced theatrical sound and lighting, new seating, aisle railings, expanded concessions, a window-walled front entryway, a new façade and roof, a restructured main entrance for wheelchair accessibility, a refitted loading dock, a new HVAC, and upgraded electrical systems.
The new year kicks off with Anna Deveare Smith’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated docudrama “Fires in the Mirror,” which investigates the 1991 violence in Crown Heights through the real words of the those involved in and affected by the conflict between the Black and Hasidic communities of Crown Heights, N.Y. Smith interviewed over 100 people The thought-provoking production is directed by BRT’s Amy Kaissar, premiering Feb. 4 to 23.
For the grand reopening of the building, BRT will invite audiences in for a vibrant party celebrating community with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ 2008 Tony and Grammy Award-winning show, “In the Heights.” Miranda’s love letter to Washington Heights, Manhattan, features bodega owner Usnavi de la Vega establishing his domain as the neighborhood historian and storyteller, introducing his community as a place defined by passion, promise, and grit. With its spicy blend of salsa, freestyles, and vivid characters, the stage smash runs March 25 to April 27.
The season closes on a suspenseful note with the whodunnit, “Alibi: An Agatha Christie Story.” Based on England’s queen-of-mystery Agatha Christie’s 1926 novel “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” the show was Christie’s first stage-adapted work. Here, it receives a fresh treatment and marks the return to BRT’s biennial Community Participatory productions, the first since the pandemic. It runs May 27 through June 15.
Single season tickets go on sale June 10, at brtstage.org. Limited seats are available for the first two shows. BRT’s productions offer special pre- and post-show engagements, included with the ticket price. Information, updates, and advance ticket purchases are available at brtstage.org and through the BRT box office at 215-785-0100.
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