British director/writer David Farr’s hilarious, freewheeling adaptation of Gogol’s The Government Inspector thrilled London audiences in 2006, where its sharp satire skewered government fraud in a fictionalized former Soviet republic.  To bring the comedy home, Next asked Victory Gardens Ensemble member James Sherman to craft a hero hailing from Chicago . Jim’s creation, the washed-up real estate salesman Michael Fitzgerald Murphy, exploits his mistaken identity as the dreaded UN Inspector for all it’s worth, revealing corruption, conspiracies and cover-ups at the highest levels of power.  Starring Joe Dempsey as Murphy, Susan Hart and Bill McGough as the glamorous and greedy President and First Lady, and Joseph Wycoff as a bumbling member of the cabinet.

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WELL By Lisa Kron Directed by Damon Kiely Chicago-area Premiere November 13 – December 14, 2008

Tony Award nominee Lisa Kron puts herself onstage in this quirky and delicious memoir about her mother’s fight for racial integration and healthy communities in Lansing , Michigan . But Kron’s self-assured character is defeated – and deconstructed – in the retelling by her own mother, who occupies a La-Z-Boy at the edge of the stage.  At first grudgingly, then energetically, Kron’s mother Ann takes over the memoir, recalling and revealing the fiery sprit beneath her lifetime of illness.  Ann buddies up with the rest of Lisa’s cast, derailing her smart and savvy performance about social and physical health, and instead weaves a funny and touching story of her daughter’s growing up.  “Kron’s hilarious, deeply affecting play cuts to the core of the mother-daughter relationship” – Entertainment Weekly

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Can one man stop an empire?  In 1936, Czech-born Karel Čapek wrote a spooky, fantastical novel about the discovery of an intelligent race of giant salamanders, which humanity enslaves for profit and nationalist advantage.  While countries use them to redraw borders and alter the world’s balance of power, the newts revolt, and begin flooding the planet to make more room for their super-race.   Next Theatre Artistic Director Jason Loewith (Adding Machine: A Musical) works with artistic associate Justin D.M. Palmer and noted puppetmaker Michael Montenegro (The Long Christmas Ride Home, Argonautika) to adapt this incredibly timely satire about a global economy planting the seeds of its own destruction.

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With his tenure at risk, Professor Jack Exley uproots his family from Illinois to Rwanda on the eve of the genocide to interview a mysterious doctor about his AIDS treatment program.  When the doctor vanishes without a trace, the family finds itself lost in sea of changing stories and shifting alliances. A hit in London in 2006 and off-Broadway in 2007, The Overwhelming is a potent, gripping drama about the challenges facing a progressive American in a foreign country on the brink of disaster.

Faith, love and loss collide in Keith Bunin’s staggeringly beautiful new play, which received its world premiere off-Broadway last year. Hannah, an Episcopal Minister, hires a young academic named Brandt to ghost-write her new controversial book on the Gnostic Gospels. When Hannah’s wayward son Thomas arrives in search of clues to his father’s death, the sparks begin to fly between them. When Thomas and Brandt fall in love, all three are thrown into a dynamic and provocative love triangle that mingles questions of faith with questions of the heart. “Dramatically and emotionally absorbing” – Variety

Watch an audio slide show with author Keith Bunin produced by the New York Times.

The author of 2005 Pulitzer- and Tony-winner Doubt has written a stunning new play intertwining ethical dilemmas about race, sexual fidelity and the cost of doing the right thing. On a North Carolina marine base in 1971, a young black Captain is promoted in order to ease the camp’s growing racial tensions. Soon, Captain and his superior officer are caught in a riveting web of moral issues that set the stage on fire. “Spellbinding! I wouldn't have thought it possible, but Shanley has followed up 'Doubt,' the best play of 2004-05, with a play of identical quality.” – Wall Street Journal

Read a full review of the New York premiere.

Leonard Bernstein’s little-heard musical, the vibrant satire Trouble in Tahiti (1952) receives an intimate and immediate staging, followed by the world premieres of brand new songs on the topic of the American Dream by the country’s leading contemporary composers, including Michael John LaChiusa (The Wild Party), Michael Friedman (Gone Missing), Michael Mahler (How Can You Run With a Shell on Your Back?), Kevin O'Donnell (Resident Composer at the House Theatre of Chicago), Michael Mahler (How Can You Run with a Shell on Your Back?), and Josh Schmidt (The Adding Machine: A Chamber Musical). Spend an evening with Bernstein’s Sam and Dinah, a married couple in 1950s suburbia, and then flash-forward 50 years to hear what our best music-theater writers discover about changing expectations of love, lifestyle and success.

Watch a video clip of the prelude to Trouble in Tahiti from the 2001 film.

Acclaimed across the country, Heather Raffo’s journey into the lives of nine Iraqi women is a riveting, explosive mix of docudrama, lyrical language and mesmerizing performance. Raffo plays all nine roles, taking us on a theatrical adventure through desire, loss, and a universal understanding of humanity. Next Theatre Company is proud to bring the Iraqi American playwright and the original director to recreate what critics across the country have hailed as one of the most important new plays of the century. Mature audiences only.

"A beautifully shaped one-woman play! It is persuasive precisely because it is beautiful. See it soon… see it tonight!" – Wall Street Journal

“Powerful, impassioned, vivid and memorable” – New York Times

Visit heatherraffo.com.