As part of their continuing mode “of trying to welcome people back to the theater,” Alley Theater Artistic Director Rob Melrose today announces a 78th season starting with a certified crowd pleaser based on past Alley seasons: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.
It’s time to get back to an isolated country manor house where seven guests, two staff members and a just-hired secretary arrive to find their host in absentia with tension building as one after another of them is killed off by an unknown murderer. It’ll be the first time since The Mousetrap (2018) that the Alley has done a play written by Christie herself rather than an adaptation of one of her books.
In all, The 2024-25 season features plays ranging from comfortable to edgy, romantic to tragic, comic to classic and classic set in a new locale. And the Alley’s All New Festival in which new work is giving readings has once again generated two plays ready for prime time at the Alley.
And, of course, there will, as always, be Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
“Almost everything we’re doing in the Hubbard has name recognition, familiar titles, we want to get people subscribing again, we want to get people back into the theater. I think this season has a little something for everybody. And especially if you get down into the Neuhaus there are some new shows that are pretty interesting and pretty cool,” Melrose said.
Alley. like other theaters, has noticed that audience members seem to like the shorter plays and Melrose says more playwrights are writing 90 to 100-minute one-act plays. Adding, however that opera audiences sit through much longer productions. “It’s a mixed bag,” he says with a lot depending on the production itself. “It starts with great writing. This season for instance, we’re doing one of the most emotional plays I’ve ever seen: Glass Menagerie. And part of it is the writing is just so beautiful.”
Tennessee Williams’ A Glass Menagerie will play out upstairs in the Hubbard Theatre. It’s the story of a three-member family, a mother who relives happier times of the past, a shy daughter who keeps a collection of glass figurines and a son who wants to be anywhere but where he is.
The other ingredient for a successful play? “I’m kind of lucky at this point in my career. I really get to work with actors who bring the emotional stakes just naturally. I don’t have to coach it or coax it out of them.”
Last spring, the Alley scored its biggest hit ever in terms of attendance in the regular season with Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily, by Katie Forgette. Melrose says, So there was little hesitation in presenting another Sherlock Holmes adaptation this year, this time by Ken Ludwig (Lend Me a Soprano) entitled Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery. It takes off from the well known The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. “It’s a small cast playing many, many parts.”
A new play, The Janeiad by Anna Ziegler, was developed on the All New Festival. Partially based on a true story, it’s about a a 911 widow who had her husband snatched from her on 911, Melrose says. She had two children, however, and devoted all her energy to raising them, but once they left for college, she was left alone. “It was the first time she was able to start dealing with how she felt about losing the love of her life, about losing her dreams. She was so focused on her kids’ dreams. She starts to really, really long for his return.”
Melrose says the play was written originally for the 20th anniversary of 911. “Anna’s way into it was to look at Penelope from The Odyssey and how she had to wait 20 years for the return of her husband. Magical things happen in the play.
“On one hand it’s heavy and moving but Anna has a tremendous sense of humor. It’s also quite funny. It’s also quite smart.”
December: a love years in the making by Marisela Treviño Orta was also developed in the All New Festival. “It takes place over decades. It starts kind of at the closing of the party of a poetry professor and she’s saying goodbye to the last people and a student of her stays to help clean up. They just have this really deep, meaningful conversation. They like each other. Poetry buffs will love it because they really get into poems. And then it just kind of ends with you knowing wow they had a magical connection but nothing more happens. And then the play leaps forward. It does something really interesting with casting. For each role there’s two actors so part of the way the characters age.”
“Everything in the Festival are things that we really believe in and we’re really excited about. We really listen to see how our audience responds and the things that they respond the most to, they get in the season.”
Playwright Theresa Rebeck who seems to have a second home at the Alley, is back with Seared which is described as “a spicy comedy.”
“It’s very much like a Top Chef kind of play or if you watch The Bear,” says Melrose. “It’s in the kitchen of an up and coming New York restaurant. Very, very small but very gourmet. Very very high standards. It’s getting written up but the co-owner who’s not the chef, wants to bring in a consultant to figure out how this place can make more money. The conflict comes when this consultant comes in and she’s got a lot of ideas [that] go against the chef’s idea of how to deliver something that’s high quality. He’s a little bit of a diva. The fights they have are very funny, very heated. The whole play has a tremendous passion for food. People who love Houston restaurants will have a fun time at this play.”
New York-based playwright Eboni Booth has a new play Primary Trust that the Alley will be doing. “It’s very sweet and imaginative and charming. It’s about a guy, he works in a bookstore. He has a very simple life. He’s a regular at this tiki bar. His interactions are all very whimsical. The writing is all very sweet.” They had wanted to put it in the reading festival but by the time they contacted Booth, it was already being done by other theaters including one off-Broadway, Melrose says laughing.
Prepare for a lot of door slamming in the farce Noises Off. It’s a show within a show of the actors in a farce called Nothing On who are s preparing to transfer the production from Britain to America,. specifically Des Moines. Hijinks ensure. during the rehearsal and performance.
“We did it 11 years ago. I think it’s oddly enough I think there are more great mysteries than there are great comedies. We really want every year to do a big comedy especially one that features the resident acting company and we felt like it’s been 11 years, this is one of the best. And ae have more technology now. I heard stiries11 years ago, the challenge of having a turntable set. They had to do a bunch of things to kind of sneakily get it. Now we have a motor that allows us to do a fully turning set. So we can really do it up right this time.”
The season ends with Noël Coward’s Private Lives directed by KJ Sanchez (American Mariachi, Quixote Nuevo) now set in 1930s Argentina instead of France.
“KJ Sanchez is a favorite director of ours. She told me a while ago this concept she had about doing Private Lives but really having tango be kind of her way in. (In the play a divorced couple honeymooning with their new spouses discover that they are staying in the same hotel, in adjacent rooms no less. And that they still have feelings for each other.) She feels the way people partner in tango kind of mirrors the way they verbally spar. in Noël Coward. She sets it in Argentina and then later in Uruguay because that’s where the tango was created and developed. The tango is a theme running through it.”
The 2024-25 Alley Season:
Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, directed by Elizabeth Williamson (Jane Eyre) runs July 19 – August 25, 2024, in the Hubbard Theatre.
Noises Off by Michael Frayn, runs September 27 – October 27, 2024, in the Hubbard Theatre, directed by Associate Artistic Director Brandon Weinbrenner
The Janeiad by Anna Ziegler and directed by Artistic Director Rob Melrose runs October 11 – November 3, 2024, in the Neuhaus Theatre.
December: a love years in the making by Marisela Treviño Orta is directed by Marcela Lorca and runs from January 17 – February 2, 2025, in the Hubbard Theatre.
Seared by Theresa Rebeck is directed by Associate Artistic Director Brandon Weinbrenner and runs February 7 – March 2, 2025 in the Neuhaus Theatre.
The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams and directed by Artistic Director Rob Melrose, it will run February 21 – March 16, 2025 in the Hubbard Theatre.
Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery by Ken Ludwig runs April 4 – April 27, 2025 in the Hubbard Theatre. Eleanor Holdridge (Jane Eyre, Lend Me a Soprano) directs.
Primary Trust by Eboni Booth is directed by Niegel Smith (Syncing Ink) and runs May 2 – May 25, 2025, in the Neuhaus Theatre.
Noël Coward’s Private Lives directed by KJ Sanchez (American Mariachi, Quixote Nuevo) runs May 23 – June 15, 2025, in the Hubbard Theatre.
The Alley’s holiday productions include A Christmas Carol, adapted from the Dickens novella and originally directed by Artistic Director Rob Melrose and runs November 14 – December 29, 2024. In the Neuhaus, a world premiere Alley Theatre commission of Isaac Gómez’s (El Chuco Town Forever) one-woman play The Night Shift Before Christmas, directed by KJ Sanchez, runs December 5 – 24, 2024.
The Alley All New Festival will occur from October 25 – October 27. Learn more about the Alley All New initiative at alleytheatre.org/allnew.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
