Westport Country Playhouse is at the start of a new phase in its 93-year history. For his first full season as the theater’s new artistic director, Mark Shanahan has announced a three-play “Season of Laughter” as well as the return of a holiday show he wrote himself, “A Sherlock Carol,” and a new musical revue.
There are bigger changes afoot: A full schedule of one-night events, self-produced concerts, short runs of touring theater show and many other attractions. The theater, which reports that it has been in difficult financial straits since the COVID pandemic, is using its stage to the utmost, filling more nights in the past year than it has booked at any other time in its history.
The fall season starts with the comedy “The 39 Steps,” Oct. 22 through Nov. 9, but the season really kicks off this week with playhouse’s annual celebrity-filled fundraising gala starring Kristin Chenoweth on Saturday.
Westport Country Playhouse began in 1931 when the married Broadway producers Lawrence Langner and Armina Marshall, who lived in Weston, renovated an old tannery building into a theater that specialized in tryouts of new works headed to New York. Over the years, the playhouse became a star-studded summer theater. It didn’t become a year-round venue until the mid-2000s, when Westport resident movie star Joanne Woodward led a major fundraising effort to renovate and revitalize the playhouse. Its six-show season was spread out over more months of the year, the shows’ runs were longer and there were special events, children’s theater series and other attractions.
Shanahan said that while the six-show schedule is no more, this season will feature “three full-length production and two smaller runs,” as well as many more single-night events than the theater has offered in years. “We’re trying to figure out how to do more, how to offer more.”
The growth comes with setbacks. “What was cut was our spending and our staff,” Shanahan said. “We have only one third of the staff we used to have. We are slowly building back.
“It’s important to remember that the playhouse “was in danger of closing its doors. The concerts help us keep going. The goal is to keep busy. There will be something on the stage nearly every week.”
One year ago, Westport Country Playhouse’s trustees launched a plan to reinvent the theater. In order to ensure the continuation of the playhouse following the pandemic, they decided to transition into a center for performing arts that appeals to a broader audience “while placing on temporary hold traditional theater productions.”
Mark Smith
Mark Shanahan, the new artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse, has announced his first full season of plays, but is also planning to fill the schedule with concerts, family shows and other events. (Mark Smith)
New leadership
Shanahan was named the incoming artistic director for the 2024-2025 season in the summer of 2023, weeks after the retirement of longtime artistic director Mark Lamos was made public.
Shanahan said when the board approached him about being artistic director it wasn’t something he was necessarily looking to do. Shanahan remembers mulling over the offer, thinking “I will never have this opportunity again.”
Shanahan’s association with Westport Playhouse goes back 20 years, first as an actor in numerous shows, then as the organizer of the theater’s long-running Script in Hand series, where professional actors give public readings of a wide range of classic and contemporary plays.
“The board approached me about it,” Shanahan said. “They said ‘We have an open calendar. What do you want to put on it?’”
The 2023 season was cut by the theater’s board from six shows to three. Ultimately only two of those shows happened: “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Dial M for Murder.” The theater had to forgo a main 2024 season due to cutbacks and the transition from Lamos to Shanahan, though some short runs of theater shows happened, including Rupert Holmes’ new play about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a new one-man show by Mike Birbiglia.
One of Shanahan’s first moves as artistic director was to bring the original cast of the off Broadway production of a play he’s written himself, “A Sherlock Carol,” to the playhouse as a holiday event. The run sold out.
The playhouse’s 2024-2025 season, beginning in October and running through April, will consist of three full productions running about three weeks each plus the return of “A Sherlock Carol” Dec. 17-22 and the musical revue “Broadway Scores at the Playhouse” Jan. 23-26.
When that season ends in the spring, the theater will present a summer of special events, then continue with a fall-to-spring main season. This is a change from the spring-to-winter main seasons the playhouse had been accustomed to since becoming a year-round regional theater a quarter century ago.
Shanahan will continue programming a lot of children’s theater events, which have proven to be popular and profitable over the years. “We’re also creating our own stuff,” he said. He remembers the full house of “13 year olds and their parents screaming” in delight for a self-produced cabaret-style concert “The Playhouse Sings: A Night for Swifties” in February.
If “The 39 Steps,” the 2008 Broadway and off-Broadway comedy hit based on the classic 1935 Alfred Hitchcock thriller, might strike some as a tame or easy choice, Shanahan has a strong justification for doing the play this year as well as a strong personal connection to the script. He performed in the New York production 15 or so years ago and has also directed several productions of the play around the country. He even taught a course on Hitchcock’s films at Fordham University. He wanted a show that was “joyful” and “family friendly” to kick off what’s he calling the playhouse’s “Season of Laughter.” He knew “The 39 Steps,” with its highly theatrical mix of physical comedy and Hitchcockian suspense, would be ideal.
Shanahan’s following “The 39 Steps” with “Native Gardens” by Karen Zacarías Feb. 18 through March 8. The play is about new neighbors feuding over the property line dividing their yards. The play has classism and entitlement themes. “It’s a wonderful comedy but has a lot to say,” Shanahan said. The season ends March 25 through April 12 with “Theatre People,” a new comedy based on the 1928 Ferenc Molnar farce “Play at the Castle” but transplanted to Rhode Island in the 1940s. The script is by West Hartford native Paul Slade Smith and was given a Script in Hand reading at the playhouse last year.
Beth Huisking
The historic Westport Country Playhouse plans to use its stage to the utmost this upcoming season, filling more nights than it has booked at any other time in its history.
Added programming
Shanahan said the “Season of Laughter” concept came to him because he feels audiences need an escape from serious and sad things in the news. His programming choices might seem like a sharp change of direction from those of Lamos, who was artistic director at the playhouse from 2009 to 2024 and previously was the artistic director of Hartford Stage from 1980 to 1997.
Lamos oversaw six-show subscription seasons that balanced comedy, drama, classics, new and experimental works. The approaches may seem different, but since COVID the subscription model is no longer a reliable way to run a theater, Shanahan is charged with trying new formats while working with fewer resources.
The gala fundraiser at the playhouse on Saturday is an example of how the playhouse is regaining its footing. The concert features the Broadway diva Kristin Chenoweth accompanied by Broadway conductor/orchestrater Mary-Mitchell Campbell, performing songs by Cy Coleman (the late “Barnum” composer whose Westport connections include creating several musicals with celebrated local writer A.E. Hotchner). The event will also feature appearances by well-known actors F. Murray Abraham (who will host the evening), Raúl Esparza, Norm Lewis, Bonnie Milligan, Debra Monk and Lillias White.
The playhouse has held other fundraisers this year also featuring major Broadway stars. There was “An Evening with Audra McDonald” in February and “An Evening with Bernadette Peters” in May.
In arranging the benefit concerts, as well as the Script in Hand readings and other events, Shanahan said he takes the advice given him by Anne Keefe, who was co-artistic director of the playhouse with Joanne Woodward around 15 years ago and who is still involved with the Script in Hand series.
“She told me to not be afraid to ask anyone” when setting up readings or other events, regardless of how famous they might be or how busy they might appear to be, he recalled. “You’ll reach out, and they tell you how they played here years ago and how much it means to them. The playhouse still calls to great talent.”
He said the more varied programming has “brought in people who had not been here in a long time, or had not been here before.”
Shanahan said the Script in Hand readings gave him a sense of how deeply the theater community cares about places like the playhouse. Writers and directors have used the readings to edit, revise or explore different themes in the works. Former Hartford Stage artistic director Michael Wilson used a recent reading of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” to try a new four-actor arrangement of the play, which Wilson had previously directed on Broadway. Shanahan introduced the reading by holding up a playbill of “The Trip to Bountiful” from when it had its pre-Broadway tryout at the playhouse in 1953. There was a member of the audience who’d seen that reading half a century ago and had returned to experience the play again in the same theater this year.
The Script in Hand series has now been expanded from five readings a year to eight, and the range of scripts has been broadened to include new works. Shanahan used the series to fine tune his own adaptation of Agatha Christie’s mystery “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.”
The playhouse also intends to continue with new series that Shanahan started this year such as the “Barnstormer” performances in the 70-seat Lucille Lortel Barn space and its family-friendly “The Playhouse Sings” concert series. There will also be film screenings. In June, pop singer/songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins used a “Barnstormer” slot to try out some of the songs from a musical she’s writing.
Booking Ari Axelrod’s “A Place for Us: A Celebration of Jewish Broadway” was “a game changer for us,” Shanahan said, calling it an opportunity to use theater to explore issues of race and inclusion. The booking was very popular.
The shows are chosen because of their appropriateness to the theater space and to its legacy, Shanahan said.
The programming, Shanahan said, “has to feel like the playhouse, something that belongs here. It has to feel like it has the heart of the playhouse.”
For more details about the Westport Country Playhouse’s gala fundraiser, its subscription play season and other events, go to westportplayhouse.org.
