The award-winning, highly anticipated “Appropriate” opens at Actor’s Express and “Moby Dick” swings at the Alliance. Plus. Much. More. Pictured: The fractured Lafayettes from “Appropriate” (bottom row, from left) Alexandra Ficken, Dylan Gage Moore, Devon Hales, John Osorio. Top row, from left: Kevin Stillwell, Jan Wikstrom, Bryan Brendle, Cynthia Barrett.
** Indicates an Encore Atlanta fall season best bet
Recommended
** Appropriate. IN PREVIEWS | OPENS SATURDAY. Award-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins gives us a darkly comic domestic drama about the adult children of a deceased Southern patriarch who just might have been a high-ranking muckety-muck in the KKK. Actor’s Express Artistic Director Freddie Ashley’s cast includes Cynthia Barrett (Silent Sky, Theatrical Outfit); Bryan Brendle (Dracula, Aurora Theatre); Alexandra Ficken (In Love and Warcraft, the Alliance); Devon Hales (The Light in the Piazza, the Outfit); and Kevin Stillwell (Synchronicity’s Lasso of Truth, 7 Stages’ Threepenny Opera). $22-$44. Through Nov. 20. 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. 887 W. Marietta St. Details, tickets HERE or at 404.607.7469. Discount tickets at PoshDealz.com.
** Freed Spirits. THROUGH OCT. 30. A world premiere by Atlanta-based playwright Daryl Lisa Fazio about a freak tornado that cuts through Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery, exposing buried clues and evoking eerie sightings. With Suehyla El-Attar and Bryn Striepe. At Horizon Theatre. 8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 3 + 8:30 p.m. Saturday; and 5 p.m. Sunday. 1083 Austin Ave. NE (at Euclid Avenue). Details, tickets HERE or at 404.584.7450.
[ENCORE SNAPSHOT: MEET THE PLAYWRIGHT BEHIND THE CAPER]
The Ghastly Dreadfuls. THROUGH OCT. 29. Something for grown-ups at the Center for Puppetry Arts. This seasonal spooktacular by master storytellers Jon Ludwig and Jason Hines turns 10 as its almost-humans and various puppets portray a motley band of specters celebrating Halloween with creepy stories, frightful songs and devilish dances. For ages 18+. $25. 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday. 1404 Spring St. NW. Details HERE. Tickets HERE or at 404.873.3391.
** Moby Dick. THROUGH OCT. 30. The Alliance Theatre presents Lookingglass Theatre’s high-flying adaptation of Herman Melville’s 1851 novel. Trapeze and acrobatic work turn this seafaring American classic into an experiment in aerial storytelling. You might recall Chicago-based Lookingglass from its 2010 Alliance visit (Lookingglass Alice). $20+. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2:30 + 8 p.m. Saturday; and 2:30 + 7:30 p.m. Sunday (no 7:30 p.m. show Oct. 30). Details, tickets HERE or at 404.733.5000.
[READ MORE: HOW THIS WHALE OF A TALE CAME TO BE]
Openings
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. OPENS TONIGHT | THROUGH NOV. 6. The inaugural production of Out Front Theatre Company is the Broadway musical based on the 1994 feature film about two drag queens and a transsexual who take a road trip across the Australian Outback. “Priscilla” is the broken-down bus they use. Out Front tells stories of the LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intergender, Allied) experience. $25. 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday. Out Front at 999 Brady Ave., West Midtown (the former Fabrefaction Theatre space). Details, tickets HERE. Discount season tickets at PoshDealz.com.
[READ: THE REST OF OUT FRONT’S SEASON]
Proof. PREVIEWS TONIGHT | OPENS FRIDAY. David Auburn’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama earned an acting Tony Award for Mary-Louise Parker and became a middling 2005 feature film with Gwyneth Paltrow. The plot revolves around Catherine (New York’s Fedna Jacquet), the troubled younger daughter of a master mathematician who has just died. She might have inherited his genius, or his madness. Tess Malis Kincaid directs. Also in the cast: Gerard Catus, Tinashe Kajese and Eric Mendenhall. Through Nov. 26. 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday. True Colors Theatre Company at the Southwest Arts Center, 915 New Hope Road. Details HERE. Tickets HERE or at 877.725.8849.
This weekend only
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. TONIGHT-SUNDAY. Conductor-composer-violinist Joseph Swensen joins the orchestra for Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, and assistant conductor Joseph Young leads the orchestra in James Lee III’s Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula and Dvořák’s “From the New World” Symphony. $20-$79. 8 nightly. Note: The Casual Fridays concert (all seats $25) begins at 6:30 p.m. and features only the Barber and Dvořák. Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. NE. Details, tickets HERE or at 404.733.5000.
Vertigo Dance Company. SATURDAY ONLY. The Israeli modern dance company visits Georgia State’s Rialto Center for the Arts with its signature artistic vision — to challenge the limits of the human body and human awareness. This performance features 20 years of Vertigo creations. $32-$63. 8 p.m. 80 Forsyth St. NW. Details, tickets HERE or at 404.413.9849.
Last chance
Women in Jeopardy. CLOSES SUNDAY. Southeastern premiere. Aurora Theatre stages Wendy MacLeod’s flirtatious 2015 comedy, a piece that follows two middle-aged women who trade wineglasses for spyglasses. Uh-oh. $20-$55. 8 tonight-Friday; 2:30 + 8 p.m. Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday. 128 E. Pike St., Lawrenceville. Free, covered, attached parking in city of Lawrenceville deck at 153 E. Crogan St. Details, tickets HERE or at 678.226.6222.
Still running
The Sleepy Hollow Experience. THROUGH NOV. 6. Ichabod Crane, Brom Bones and the Headless Horseman gallop through Serenbe Playhouse for a fourth season of ghoulishly good fun among the trees and shadows. It features real horses and a cast featuring such returnees as Blake Burgess (Brom Bones), Chris Mayers (Ichabod Crane) and Brandon Connor Partrick (Storyteller). Please note: This is a traveling performance without seating, but chairs can be provided by request through the box office. $20-$30. 8 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday + Sunday; 8 + 10:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday. The Horseman’s Meadow at Serenbe, 10950 Hutchesons Ferry Road, Chattahoochee Hills. Details and tickets HERE or at 770.463.1110. Discount tickets available at PoshDealz.com.
Next week
ASO: The Nightmare Before Christmas. OCT. 28-29. Watch director Tim Burton’s 1993 feature film while the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performs the score live. Jack Skellington, still king of Halloween Town, discovers Christmas Town, but doesn’t quite understand the concept. Costumes encouraged. Guest conductor Stuart Chafetz is on the podium. $20. Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. NE. Details, tickets HERE or at 404.733.5000.
Coming up
** On the Verge. NOV. 3-20. Subtitled Or the Geography of Learning. The year is 1888, and three female explorers begin a witty and whimsical safari through space and time to a place called Terra Incognita. Think part “Twilight Zone” and part Back to the Future. The New York Times described Eric Overmyer’s 1985 comedy as “blending Tom Stoppard’s limber linguistics with the historic overview of a Thornton Wilder.” Atlanta actor Carolyn Cook directs a Georgia Ensemble Theatre cast featuring Keena Redding Hunt, Park Krausen, Michelle Maria Pokopac and Topher Payne. (If this fanciful piece sounds familiar, you might remember it from 2001, when Synchronicity Theatre staged it.) $26-$35. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday; 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Also at 4 p.m. Nov. 12 + 19. Roswell Cultural Arts Center, 950 Forrest St., Roswell. Details, tickets HERE or at 770.641.1260.
Silent Night. NOV. 5, 8, 11 + 13. Atlanta Opera presents the U.S. premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning piece about one Christmas during World War I, when French, British and German soldiers put down their weapons and left their fetid trenches to share cigarettes and brandy, exchange gifts and play soccer. Based on the Oscar-nominated 2005 film Joyeux Noël (screening for free at 7 p.m. Oct. 27 at Midtown Arts Cinema in the Midtown Promenade, 931 Monroe Drive NE. Reserve seats HERE). Sung in English, German, French, Italian and Latin with English supertitles. $35 and up. 8 p.m. Nov. 5 + 11; 7:30 p.m. Nov. 8; 3 p.m. Nov. 13. Opening night includes a pre-performance talk with Kevin Puts, the Pulitzer-winning composer, and librettist Mark Campbell. Details, tickets HERE or at 404.881.8885. Discount tickets at PoshDealz.com.
Slur. NOV. 5 ONLY. World premiere. Daisy is a typical middle-schooler, or so she thought until someone writes a religious slur on her locker. Are we what society says we are, she wonders. Or can we be whoever we want to be? An original play about identity, race and religion in middle school by Greg Changnon in collaboration with his students at the Paideia School and the young actors in the Alliance Theatre summer drama camps. $18-$32. 1 + 3:30 p.m. Alliance Theatre, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. NE. Details, tickets HERE or at 404.733.5000.
