Michael Tammaro Marin IrelandSoho Rep has big ambitions for its small new season. On Tuesday the downtown theater company announced it will mount two full productions in 2013-14: the New York premiere of David Adjmi’s “Marie Antoinette,†and “An Octoroon†by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.
“Marie Antoinette†(Oct. 9-Nov. 3) is Mr. Adjmi’s (“3Câ€) modern take on the doomed French queen. The show had its premiere last year at Yale Rep in a coproduction with American Repertory Theater. Reprising their roles from that production will be the actors Marin Ireland as Marie, Steven Rattazzi as Louis XVI and David Greenspan as a sheep. Rebecca Taichman will direct. The play is Ms. Ireland’s first role at Soho Rep since her heralded turn in Sarah Kane’s “Blasted†in 2008. Other cast members include Marsha Stephanie Blake, Karl Miller and Jen Ikeda; additional casting is to be announced. In his review of the show at Yale Rep, Charles Isherwood called it a “cursory comic strip of a play†that echoes the Marie depicted in Sofia Coppola’s anachronistic, punk-infused movie starring Kirsten Dunst.
In the spring Sarah Benson, Soho Rep’s artistic director, will direct “An Octoroon,†Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins’s stage adaptation of “The Octoroon,†a 19th-century melodrama by the Irish playwright Dion Boucicault about interracial romance on a Louisiana plantation. A cast and run dates are to be announced. The piece has been reconceived and rewritten since it was first staged three years ago at Performance Space 122. The show drew attention before it opened when the director Gavin Quinn withdrew after creative disagreements with Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins, who took over as director. Last year Soho Rep mounted a reading of the work staged by the British playwright Mark Ravenhill.
Both productions are larger in scope than those in the past at Soho Rep, which has usually produced three shows per season. A spokesman for the theater said that in addition to a standard creative team, both “Marie Antoinette†and “An Octoroon†will require a wig designer, a choreographer, a fight choreographer and a video designer. In past seasons, a production typically would require only one of these additional artists.
