Role playing More is more on local stages BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

Sometimes the thrill of theater is seeing something problematical done well. There’s an upcoming production that in the past hasn’t been appreciated by critics, but the prospect sounds like a must-see because of who is directing it.

Wendy Overly, one of the strongest actors to emerge around here in years, has chosen to stage Anna Deavere Smith’s House Arrest: A Search for American Character In and Around the White House, Past and Present.

The play will run September 29 through October 3 at Rhode Island College, with undergraduate actors "coached," as director Overly put it, by her MFA students.

House Arrest premiered in 1997 at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. With both that one-person version, which Smith performed herself, and the later multi-actor revision, critics found a lack of focus. In her trademark method, over five years Smith had conducted 425 interviews, with White House-connected people from Bill Clinton to Anita Hill to CBS’s Ed Bradley.

"I’ve read probably the same reviews you have, and I find some of the same faults in the script that some of the reviewers did," Overly said. But nevertheless: "I think that this being an election year, it’s really important to bring to the forefront some of the words that our past presidents have said."

She added that the play also is an indictment of the media’s failed responsibility to keep us fully informed about presidential activity, which is certainly on our minds this election season.

Overly’s decision to stage House Arrest snugly fits RIC’s new MFA program in performance and society, designed to use theater "as a powerful tool for social and political change." She has directed more than 50 plays in the past 25 years, such as Molière’s The Misanthrope last year at RIC and several productions at Perishable Theatre. But since Overly came to Rhode Island in 1999, the Equity actor has done more performing than directing, including her stunning interpretation of Aunt Dan in Wallace Shawn’s Aunt Dan and Lemon in February at Gamm. As well as teaching at RIC, Overly is busy as assistant professor/ coordinator of acting and directing at UMASS Boston. She recently completed a feature film, playing the title role in Elizabeth Gunness, reprising with local actor Jeannine Kane a similarly perverse mentor relationship to that in Aunt Dan.

Of course, there are other productions of particular interest coming up this fall. Such as:

Trinity Repertory Company is going back to its roots — actually performing in rep again. A three-play cycle, The Henriad: Shakespeare’s Kings, will be performed October 5 through December 19 in the intimate downstairs theater. The plays are Richard II, directed by Kevin Moriarty; Henry IV, directed by Amanda Dehnert; and Henry V, directed by Oskar Eustis. The project also returns to drawing from company actors, after having brought in so many outside actors for recent productions. The decision to do All Shakespeare All the Time for two and a half months is a venturesome one by artistic director Eustis, especially coming right after the crowd-pleasing Ain’t Misbehavin’.

Perishable Theatre will present the 12th Annual International Women’s Playwriting Festival September 29 through October 30, its only main stage production until winter. The winning one-acts this year are: Gone With the Window, by Providence’s Jennifer Haley, a satirical retelling of the Margaret Mitchell potboiler placed in a corporate setting; The Dog, by Holly Hildebrand, about a child in 1962 who is trying to cope with her teacher’s Cold War terror alerts; and J.C. Samuels’s How High the Moon?, in which a young girl and a Rwanda refugee meet at a bus stop and learn from each other.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre will be doing Jim Cartwright’s The Rise and Fall of Little Voice November 11 through December 12. It’s billed as "a play with music," as opposed to an out-and-out musical, featuring Casey Seymour Kim as an awkwardly shy recluse who is discovered for her talent of mimicking singers from Edith Piaf to Judy Garland. Wendy Overly will play her mother, and it will be directed by Judith Swift, known for her finesse with intimate dramas at URI Theatre. The play inspired the 1998 indie favorite Little Voice.

At 2nd Story Theatre, they will be trying to reprise their win last season with the very funny The Learned Ladies — the Warren theater’s most successful production yet — with another Molière translation by poet Richard Wilbur. They can’t go wrong with the classic farce Tartuffe, which will run November 12 through December 12.

At Brown October 21 through 31, Nilo Cruz’s Anna In the Tropics will be special for more than the play’s Pulitzer-winning kudos last year. The Cuban-American playwright is a product of Paula Vogel’s playwriting program at Brown. Full of rich, poetic language, the story is set in a Florida cigar factory in 1929. It will be directed by Lowry Marshall.

URI Theatre is opening its season with The Grapes of Wrath (October 14 through 23). The Tony Award-winning play by Frank Galati is based on the John Steinbeck novel, which won a Pulitzer for its depiction of Depression-era migrants. Directed by Bryna Wortman, the production is being done in conjunction with the university’s semester-long honors colloquium, "Food and Human Rights: Hunger and Social Policy." A panel discussion will take place on Sunday, October 17 after the 7:30 p.m. performance.

Providence Black Rep is staging Sam Shepard’s Suicide in B Flat (October 7 through November 14). It’s a comedy by a playwright better known for plumbing mythical depths of America’s collective consciousness than for tickling funny bones. Yet Shepard’s trademark controlled ambiguity abounds, as we and the two foolish detectives we meet don’t know at first whether we’ve found a murder or a suicide — or even whether the death is symbolic rather than actual.

Providence Performing Arts Center is trucking in a show where you will definitely see more orange or green hair than blue. For one performance only on October 16, Def Poetry Jam will be in the house. Russell Simmons and Stan Lathan have blended hip-hop and poetry slams with a DJ’s spinning for mood-setting decoration between the words. The Tony-winning show has eight young poets talking about identity, role models, and love.

Off the beaten path, at Firehouse Theater in Newport, NewStage is presenting Lion in Winter (November 19 through December 19), directed by Nigel Gore. Also at Firehouse, Ira Levin’s chilling Veronica’s Room will be on the boards around Halloween (October 1 through November 8). The author of Rosemary’s Baby tosses a coed into a spooky mansion, where she is asked to dress in the clothing of the dead Veronica to comfort the deceased’s crazed and dying sister. Oooooh!

In a co-production with NewGate Theatre, Playwrights Place Productions is staging David W. Christner’s A Little Lower Than the Angels, directed by Brien Lang. Performances will take place in churches throughout the Providence, East Bay, and Aquidneck Island areas through November 28 to benefit The Network for Homeless Families in Rhode Island. Combining two love stories with history, the play deals with the Triangle Trade that allowed Rhode Island to prosper from the slave trade. Go to www.playwrightsplace.com or phone (401) 849-3611 for a schedule.