2000-01
Nicholas Martin opened his first season as the Huntington's artistic director by restaging his production of Sidney Kingsley's rarely revived 1935 drama, "Dead End," which had won acclaim at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. The season also included Becky Mode's comedy about a reservation clerk at a hot restaurant, "Fully Committed," and one of Martin's greatest successes here, "Hedda Gabler." Starring Kate Burton, the Ibsen classic moved from Boston to New York.
2001-02 The darkly comic "Betty's Summer Vacation" by Christopher Durang, another previous hit for Martin, proved successful in his second Huntington season as well. On a grander and more somber scale, Frank McGuinness's "Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme" scored with critics, if not war-wary audiences, both here and in New York.
2002-03 Martin found the humor in Ivan Turgenev's "A Month in the Country," as adapted by Brian Friel. As for Benn Levy's "Springtime for Henry," Ed Siegel observed in his Globe review that this 1931 comedy at its dated worst could seem like "Coward Lite," but he also found that Martin and his cast "infuse the comedy with a bouncier beat."
2003-04 Celebrated friends came to Boston in Martin's fourth season here: Nathan Lane for Simon Gray's "Butley," another New York transfer, and Andrea Martin for "The Rose Tattoo" by Tennessee Williams.
2004-2005 The director remembers "Sonia Flew," by actress-playwright Melinda Lopez, as one of the high points of his Boston tenure. This season also saw two very different comedies: a Restoration warhorse, "The Rivals," by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and a modern dark horse, Christopher Durang's "Laughing Wild."
2005-06 "The Sisters Rosensweig," by Martin's good friend Wendy Wasserstein, proved popular with audiences and critics alike. And a lovely, light-filled staging of "Love's Labour's Lost" gave this most heady of Shakespeare's comedies a much-needed heart.
2006-07 Kate Burton returned to star in "The Cherry Orchard," in a fine new translation by Richard Nelson. Melinda Lopez, meanwhile, stepped in at the last minute as a Greek statue in "Persephone," a new play by Noah Haidle. And a couple of star turns by New York friends Victor Garber and Brooks Ashmanskas added sparkle to an already glittering production of Noel Coward's "Present Laughter."
2007-08 Martin's final production as artistic director will be this month's musical, "She Loves Me," by Joe Masteroff, Sheldon Harnick, and Jerry Bock. But he's already made plans to come back and visit: He'll return next season with his warm, rich production of "The Corn Is Green," in which Williamstown audiences were thrilled to see Burton acting with her son, Morgan Ritchie.
LOUISE KENNEDY
