Those of you who know the iconoclastic plays of the great absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco (The Chairs, The Bald Soprano, many others) might not think that his works would lend themselves readily to musicalization. Yet, the show Ionescopade, subtitled “A Musical Vaudeville,” does just that, celebrating the master playwright’s words in sketch and song. Originally seen off-Broadway in 1974, Ionescopade gets a new production courtesy of The York Theatre Company and directed by Bill Castellino. The cast includes Nancy Anderson, Paul Binotto, Samuel Cohen, David Edwards, Leo Ash Evans, Susan J. Jacks and Tina Stafford. Performances begin Jan. 23, with opening night set for February 2. www.yorktheatre.org
MATTERS OF THE MART
And speaking of iconoclasts… Eugene Ionesco would have fit right in with the boundary-breaking artists in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP.) Now those artists will have a chance to shine — individually and collectively — in HERE’s annual CULTUREMART Festival, offering them a platform to blur the lines between dance, theater, music, multimedia, puppetry and visual art on their journey to eventual mainstage productions. Catch a soon-to-be mover and shaker on his or her way up when the festival runs from January 24-February 11 at HERE. For more info, visit www.here.org.
WHAT’S ON TELLY?
You probably have to be a certain age (or just a vintage TV fanatic) to remember the actor Telly Savalas (I plead the fifth, though I am a vintage TV fanatic), who rocketed to small- screen stardom in the 1970s on the CBS detective drama Kojak, and becoming an unlikely tough-guy sex symbol in the bargain. Now actor Tom DiMenna channels the bald and burly Mr. Savalas in Who Loves You, Baby? (A Posthumous Lounge Act) in which the iconic actor comes back to life in a unique and surreal atmosphere of nightclub comedy and supernatural stagecraft. Hunter Nelson is the author and Taylor Negron is the director, and Mr. DiMenna will hold sway at the SoHo Playhouse from now until April 15. You’ll love him, baby. www.tellysavalaslive.com.
SUMMER’S COMIN’
Okay, that’s an optimistic thought in the dead of January, I realize, but it’s never really too early to think about summer stock when you’re in the theater, and one of our great summer companies, Williamstown Theatre Festival, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, is already announcing plans for summer 2012. Hot off the wire is the news this week that WTF will premiere a new musical in July, one that’s sure to generate buzz all the way down to New York. Far From Heaven is based on Todd Haynes’s provocative Oscar-nominated film of the same name from a few years ago (Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid starred), and the musical version features a book by Richard Greenburg and a score by the Grey Gardens team of Scott Frankel and Michael Korie. Also on tap in Williamstown: a new play called The Blue Deep, about a mother and daughter at odds with each other during a summer in the Hamptons, written by Lucy Boyle and starring one of Williamstown’s favorite leading ladies, the marvelous Blythe Danner. For more info, visit www.wtfestival.org.
COLLEGE DAZE
Higher education takes a hit in D.B. Gilles’s Inadmissible, a sharply comic — maybe even tragicomic — look at the backroom deals made by an admissions committee at a university striving to make it into the Top 10. (And here we all were thinking that only the best and brightest get into the elite universities!) Sherri Eden Barber directs a cast that features Charise Greene, Richard Hoehler and Kathryn Kates, and performances begin January 25 at Canal Park Playhouse (on Canal Street in Tribeca.) www.canalparkplayhouse.com.
AROUND TOWN
That ever busy Midtown International Theatre Festival (MITF) will present another MITF Symposium on January 26 at 7 p.m. at The June Havoc Theatre in the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex. The symposium will feature a panel of Festival staff and previous Festival participants leading a discussion about the Festival itself and the reasons for artists to choose the Festival. Admission is free. www.midtownfestival.org. … Is Valentine’s Day the most dreaded day of the year? In Lovesick, or Things That Don’t Happen, billed as an “anti-musical,” fourteen actor/musicians romp through a collection of modern love songs and stories set on that red-letter February 14, proving once again that the course of true love — or Valentine’s Day — never runs smooth. Lia Romeo and Tony Biancosino are the writers, and Michole Biancosino directs. Performances begin February 3 at 59E59 Theaters. www.59e59.org
