drood01
This season concludes with “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” Pictured: Paige Mattox as Drood.

Dunwoody-based Stage Door Players has announced six shows for its 2015-16 season, which runs Sept. 25 through Aug. 7.

The is the 42nd season for the professional company led by by producing artistic director Robert Egizio and based at 5339 Chamblee Dunwoody Road. Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

Single-show tickets ($15-$30) and subscription packages ($84-$153) are available now. Details HERE. Tickets can be ordered from the box office at 770.396.1726 or online through TIX.com.

Don’t look too far ahead, though. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Stage Door’s final show this season, opens July 10 and runs through Aug. 2. The dark, wild and twisty musical by Rupert Holmes (“The Piña Colada Song”) begins when the Music Hall Royale “puts on” its rendition of an unfinished Dickens mystery. Drood, the title character, inexplicably disappears and, by the end of the night, the audience votes on who his murderer might be.

Now, the 2015-16 lineup:

southern_comfortsSouthern Comforts. SEPT. 25-OCT. 18. This gentle comedy by playwright Kathleen Clark (Secrets of a Soccer Mom) gives a Yankee widower and a Tennessee grandmother a second chance at love. The New York Times called the 2006 piece “a delightful and sneakily sexy romance.”

let_nothing_you_dismayLet Nothing You Dismay. DEC. 4-20. New from Atlanta playwright Topher Payne (Swell Party, Angry Fags,  Evelyn in Purgatory). Eight actors play 22 characters in this Christmas farce about a couple about to adopt a baby, when it’s born and when their many family members stop interfering.

i_hate_hamletI Hate Hamlet. JAN. 29-FEB. 21, 2016. Playwright Paul Rudnick’s well-known 1991 comedy about a TV actor who must deign to play Hamlet, a character he loathes, in a situation complicated by the arrival of John Barrymore’s drunk and fully costumed ghost.

hail_maryHail, Mary! MARCH 25-APRIL 17, 2016. An irreverent look at religious fundamentalism from Tom Dudzick (Miracle on South Division Street) about a novice and a Mother Superior who don’t see eye to eye on religion, or much else.

the_39_stepsThe 39 Steps. MAY 20-JUNE 12, 2016. This Tony and Drama Desk award-winning (2008) whodunit by Patrick Barlow, based on the John Buchan novel, combines elements of Hitchcock, spy novels and Monty Python and asks four actors to play more than 150 characters. It moves … fast!

kateKiss Me, Kate. JULY 15-AUG. 7. The great Cole Porter’s last great musical is a show-within-a-show delight based on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. The 19-song score includes “Another Op’nin’ Another Show,” “So in Love,” “I Hate Men,” “Too Darn Hot,” “From This Moment On” and “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.”

About Kathy Janich

Kathy Janich is a longtime arts journalist who has been seeing, working in or writing about the performing arts for most of her life. She's a member of the Theatre Communications Group, the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, Americans for the Arts and the National Arts Marketing Project. Full disclosure: She’s also an artistic associate at Synchronicity Theatre.

View all posts by Kathy Janich