Goodman Theatre announces 2024-25 season: "Inherit the Wind," "Betrayal," and "The Color Purple"
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The Goodman Theatre has announced its 2024-2025 season, featuring a lineup of classic plays and one very high-powered star.
Among the works on the schedule is a new production of "Inherit the Wind," based on the 1925 Scopes trial over a ban on teaching evolution in public schools. The first play of the new season, it will run at Goodman from Sept. 14 to Oct. 13 at the mainstage Albert Theatre. The cast has yet to be announced.
The Goodman's main stage also will feature a production of James Ijames' "Fat Ham," directed by Tyrone Phillips, from Jan. 11 to Feb. 23, 2025. The Pulitzer Prize-winning reimagining of "Hamlet" is set at a Southern cookout and brings a Black, queer perspective to Shakespeare's most famous play.
Oscar-winning actress Helen Hunt will star in a staging of director Susan V. Booth's revival of Harold Pinter's "Betrayal" in the mainstage Albert Theatre from Feb. 8 through March 16, 2025. Telling the story of a seven-year affair involving two married couples, the play uses reverse chronology to structure the plot, with the opening scenes taking place after the affair has ended, and the final scene ending when the affair begins.
From April 19 to May 18, 2025, director Lileana Blain-Cruz will lead a staging of Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Zora Howard's "BUST," a surrealist dark comedy that starts with the traffic stop of a Black man that takes an unexpected twist and the story goes viral.
The mainstage's season will wrap up with "The Color Purple," a musical production of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel directed by Lili-Anne Brown, running from June 21 to July 27, 2025. The play follows the story of a Black teen being raised in Georgia in the early 1900s, as she struggles with an abusive father, pregnancy, and an abusive marriage.
From Oct. 5 to Nov. 3, Goodman will stage a production of "Primary Trust," written by Eboni Booth, and directed by Malkia Stampley, in the Goodman's smaller Owen Theatre.
In May and June of 2025, the Owen Theatre also will stage the world-premiere production of a new play written by Pulitzer Prize finalist Jordan Harrison, and directed by Tony Award and MacArthur "Genius" Grant winner David Cromer, who returns to the Goodman for the first time in more than a decade.
