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With today's publication of new reviews and news, Potomac Stages completes the coverage of theater in the Potomac Region for 2006 as the staff takes a vacation until January. It has been an incredibly good year for theater lovers in the region and we look forward to an even better 2007. We wish all our readers the very best of holidays and hope they will all join us again in January and share the new year's theater adventures with us.

With the possibility of a Broadway production in the near future, the holders of the performance rights for Lone Star Love, Jack Herrick's (of the Red Clay Ramblers) good-natured country western musical adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor, have cancelled the planned Folger Theatre production which was set for March - April of 2007. The theater still hopes to include the show, in which Falstaff and his band are former Confederate soldiers banished to Texas after the US Civil War, in a future season. Added to the schedule for the theater for one weekend during the period opened by the cancellation will be the premiere of a solo show by Roger Rees, winner of the Tony Award for the title role in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby, who starred as Alfie Byrne in the world premiere of A Man of No Importance at the Lincoln Center in New York and had a recurring role as "Lord John Marbury" on television's The West Wing, among other career highlights. The show by this alumnus of the Royal Shakespeare Company, What You Will: An Evening By and About the Bard, will play March 30 - April 1.

Readers with gifts yet to buy for their theater loving friends and loved ones may want to know that the Holiday Gift Guide published by Potomac Stages at the start of December has grown. Additions have been made most days since December 4, so there is a great deal more variety to the suggested items. Among the additions are Mel Atkey's book on the development of musical theater in Canada, Broadway North, Robert Viagas' book The Alchemy of Theatre, the new Off-Broadway recording of The Fantasticks, a collection of re-issues of recordings of major Broadway revivals (The King and I, South Pacific and My Fair Lady) on Broadway Masterworks, another set of three reissues on DRG Records' Broadway Collectors Series (Three Wishes for Jamie, Kismet and Salvation). For those who want a gift certificate good for tickets to theaters throughout the region, there is also the TixCertificates program of the Helen Hayes Awards Organization.

Different theater companies have come up with different ways to present a weekly installment of Suzan-Lori Parks' project of one play a day for a year. The project has drawn participation from arts organizations throughout the region, each taking on seven plays for a week. Each play runs about ten minutes so a week's worth can be performed in a block in about an hour. Some theaters do a show a day. Some do a week's worth at a time. The American Century Theater Company has come up with a unique approach for this week's installment. They will perform all seven as radioplays before microphones hooked to a telephone system that allows people to dial in using a toll free line or a local 703 area code call. The theater points out that groups can listen around a speaker phone just as families or groups shared radio experiences in the middle of the American Century. The "phonecast" begins tonight at 8 o'clock. To listen, dial toll free 1-866-212-0875 and insert the code 4930306 followed by the pound sign or just call the theater's message line at 703-553-8782. The performance will also be available through the internet on the company's website at www.americancentury.org.

The December edition of Access Montgomery's cable channel 19 television program Just Theater, airs tonight and every Friday night at 9:00 and again on Mondays at 5:30. Potomac Stages' Brad Hathaway and Montgomery Access Theatre Critic Faiga Levine discuss four shows this month. They are: The Beaux's Stratagem at the Shakespeare Theater Company, The Long Christmas Ride Home at the Studio Theatre, A Raisin in the Sun at the African Continuum Theatre Company and the Arena Stage revival of She Loves Me.

Potomac Stages Reviews Holliday Shows At Both Toby’s Dinner Theaters

Today’s new reviews include the holiday musicals playing at Toby’s two dinner theaters in Maryland. The addition of reviewer William Bryan to the Potomac Stages staff has allowed an increase in the number of reviews we have been able to schedule and to publish. Readers will find today’s coverage includes both Here’s Love, at Toby’s Dinner Theatre in Columbia, reviewed by Brad Hathaway, and It’s A Wonderful Life, at Toby’s Dinner Theatre in Baltimore, reviewed by William Bryan.

The Theater Program at Georgetown University and Arena Stage have agreed to a partnership involving the hosting of artists, developing play workshops and linking students and professionals in a mentorship program. The partnership is expected to build on the success of their cooperation on a workshop this fall involving Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project, which saw visiting artists housed on the Georgetown campus, and the recent panel discussion featuring members of the Area Writers Council including Nilo Cruz, David Henry Hwang, Charles Randolph-Wright and Karen Zacarías which was held in the Gonda Theatre on the University's campus.

The outdoor theater that mounts musicals all summer long just steps from the water in Annapolis will host revelers on New Year's Eve as part of First Night Annapolis' celebration of the new year. The Annapolis Summer Garden will have a video of its final summer show of 2006, Broadway Under The Stars, running in its lobby/box office area along with free hot cider for visitors as they kick off their New Years Eve celebration on Sunday night, December 31st. The theater will also take the opportunity of the celebration to announce their line up of shows for the summer of 2007.

Soundincentive, a group of local theater and audio artists who revive American radio plays, will mount a live performance of a radio version of the holiday movie classic at the H Street Playhouse tonight at 7:30. Susan Lynskey directs a cast that includes Kathleen Coons, Terrence Currier, John Dow, Helen Hedman, James Konicek, Nancy Robinette,  Steven Schmidt,  James Slaughter and herself. The performance will be repeated next Monday night as well.

Many of the members of Keegan Theatre's artistic team worked at Rockville's F. Scott Fitzgerald Theater early in their careers. When they heard that the Fitzgerald was slated for a renovation and would donate its old theater seats to local arts groups, they knew just the place to put many of them - in the Church Street Theater in NW where Keegan began and where many of its shows have played recently. Stefan Gibson, Bruce Lugn, Daniel Lyons, Dan Martin, Richard Montgomery, Mark Rhea and Katrina Whiskup, as well as Keegan's Eric, George, and Gloria Lucas, along with Church Street's Edward McGee, spent a full workweek removing Church Street's old, uncomfortable seats, repairing and painting Church Street's risers, and installing 130 "new" seats. Since the seats from the Fitzgerald took up less floor space than the old ones, the result was not only more comfortable seating, but also an increase in leg room in some of the most confined spaces in the audience, although some rows still are uncomfortable for anyone who requires more than minimal leg room.

Arena Stage announced yesterday that they have passed the $100 million mark in their $120 million capital campaign to fund the new complex which will add one theater and wrap the entire "campus" in South West under a sweeping cantilevered roof forming a point aligned up the waterfront toward the Washington Monument. The new center will be named for the principal contributors, long time Potomac Region theater supporters Gilbert and Jaylee Mead. The formal name will be "Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater." Click here to view pictures of the new complex.

The theater enthusiasts who usher in the region's theaters and participate in Potomac Stages' Ushers' Favorite Show Award program have named the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company production of Charlotte Jones's quirky play Martha, Josie and the Chinese Elvis their favorite among all the shows they saw in November. This is the second time a Woolly show has been selected in the last three months. In September, the Ushers named In the Continuum at Woolly one of two favorites for the month. After the new year, the participating Ushers will be asked to chose from among the monthly winners to name a favorite show of the year. To be eligible to participate in the Ushers' Favorite Show Award program, a theater lover must regularly volunteer at live theater events and also regularly see shows at a number of theaters. To sign up to be an Ushers Judge, send an email message to Ushers@PotomacStages.com.

VA’s ArtSpeak! Hosts E. Faye Butler Tonight

Tonight at 7 o'clock E. Faye Butler will be the guest at ArtSpeak! at Poe Middle School in Annandale, Virginia. The free program features a student interview of the actress, a question and answer session with the audience and a few songs. Butler has just completed the pre-Broadway run of the new production of The Wiz in which she is the Wicked Witch of the West. Variety said of her performance: "Butler may rival and even eclipse the witchery of the sainted Margaret Hamilton." She is well known in the Potomac Region for her work in Ain’t Misbehavin at Arena Stage, The Gospel According to Fishman at Signature Theatre and Once on This Island at Baltimore's CENTERSTAGE.

Potomac Stages Holliday Gift Guide Now Online

Looking for the right gift for a theater lover? Potomac Stages has compiled a list of recordings, books and calendars that will fill the bill. As the season progresses, additional items will be added. So check here now for current gift ideas ... and check back throughout December for other great gifts.

Smithsonian Will Bring Perseverance Theatre's Macbeth To Town

The year long Shakespeare in Washington, 2007 festival is drawing more and more interesting material to the Potomac Region as theater companies and other performance organizations set plays, readings, ballets, operas, symphonies and even jazz concerts on Shakespearean themes. A new addition is the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian hosting of Alaska's Perseverance Theatre's Tlingit-themed production of Macbeth with an all-Alaska Native cast for eight performances next March 8 - 18. Perseverance is the company that was headed by Molly Smith before she came to Arena Stage. It is now headed by PJ Paparelli, formerly Associate Director at the Shakespeare Theatre here.