Twin Cities fall theater lineup is heavy on classics

The menu for Minnesota theatergoers will lean more heavily on comfort food than usual this fall.

Over the past two years, a variety of companies programmed plays that centered on quirky, authentic characters, including the trans, nonbinary and queer headliners of the Jungle’s “Rich Dogs” and “Amm(i)gone,” Theater Mu’s “Fifty Boxes of Earth” and “Stop Kiss,” Penumbra’s “When We Are Found,” and Mixed Blood’s Trans Voices Cabaret.

If there are similar works in the 2025-26 lineup, they are fewer in number and not being trumpeted as loudly.

Instead, the season is heavy on familiar classics and their derivatives. Titles include “A Doll’s House” at the Guthrie Theater, “The Cherry Orchard” at the Jungle Theater, “Treasure Island” at the Children’s Theatre Company, “My Fair Lady” at Theater Latte Da and the Broadway tour of “The Phantom of the Opera” at the Orpheum.

There’s also screen-to-stage migrants such as “The Notebook,” a musical whose ultimate inspiration is Nicholas Sparks’ 1996 romance novel. It will play at the Ordway Center. Then there’s the pre-Broadway engagement of “Purple Rain,” the adaptation of Prince’s 1984 film that will have its premiere at the State Theatre.

However, the shows have strong talent attached to them. Henrik Ibsen’s “Doll’s House,” for example, has a modern take by playwright Amy Herzog and will star regional theater actor Amelia Pedlow, Broadway veteran David Andrew MacDonald and “Desperate Housewives” alum Ricardo Chavira.

To be clear, seasons have always had familiar titles. But they feel over-weighted this year, especially since these shows lead into the mirthful holiday jollity of “A Christmas Carol,” “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “White Christmas,” “Dinner for One” and “Black Nativity.”

“In troubled times there’s less appetite for risk-taking or doing daring shows,” said Park Square’s executive artistic director Stephen DiMenna, who noted that his company is celebrating its 50th anniversary after a near-death experience.

“We have a good reason to provide birthday cake comfort food but we will be more adventurous next year,” he added.

In truth, an announcement of show titles tells very little about what one may actually see onstage. Classics can be mined to provide revelatory insights into our contemporary condition. Witness the Guthrie’s summer hit, “Cabaret,” a signal artistic achievement that had profound cultural resonance, or CTC’s “Frozen,” which also proved to be arrestingly lucid.

But as a field that sees itself as being bold, heroic and inclusive, it seems to pull back on its ambition. It’s also hard to escape the sense that most of the shows sweeping across the stages this fall are primarily looking back.

So, too, are the Broadway tours of the Neil Diamond musical “A Beautiful Noise” and “The Addams Family.”

The premiere of George Abud’s “The Ruins” is highly anticipated, not least of all because Abud, who also performs, and co-star Sydney Shepherd play instruments in a show that marks the re-opening of the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio.

Staying at the Guthrie, “Primary Trust,” Eboni Booth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about a former orphanage resident who is left emotionally bereft after losing his job at a bookstore, will have its regional premiere. Will Sturdivant headlines the power-packed three-person cast that includes Nubia Monks and Pearce Bunting.

Two new artistic directors — Rick Dildine at CTC and Caitlin Lowans at Ten Thousand Things Theater — are making their directorial debuts. Dildine’s “Treasure Island” is headlined by Reed Sigmund as Long John Silver. Lowans’ “Two Gents” has a feminist gloss and is headlined by Michelle de Joya, Kimberly Richardson and Sara Richardson.

Guthrie artistic director Joseph Haj is staging Matthew Lopez’s dance suffused “Somewhere” as a companion piece to “West Side Story,” as both are set in the same New York neighborhood and era.

And at Theater Latte Da, artistic director Justin Lucero has cast Anna Hashizume, who is at home in opera as she is in “Grease,” and James A. Williams, a Minnesota stalwart best known for essaying the works of August Wilson, as the leads of “My Fair Lady.”