Two contemporary musicals — The Ballad of Klook and Vinette and Freaky Friday — begin Horizon Theatre’s 2018 season. Unlike many metro companies, Horizon runs on the calendar year instead of the school year. If it follows form, the season will eventually include five mainstage productions and wrap with the holiday perennials Santaland Diaries and Madeline’s Christmas. Here’s a closer look:
The Ballad of Klook and Vinette. JAN. 19-FEB. 18. An American premiere from London-based playwright Ché Walker, who directs. Klook is a drifter who’s tired of drifting; Vinette is on the run but doesn’t know what’s chasing her. Together, they make a tentative stab at love. The contemporary story comes with a soulful jazz score (music and lyrics by Anoushka Lucas and Omar Lye-Fook, with musical direction by Atlanta’s Christian Magby). Amari Cheatom (the film Django Unchained) is Klook. Brittany Inge (Horizon’s Blackberry Daze) is Vinette.
Freaky Friday. MARCH 9-APRIL 22. This story — of an overworked mother and teenage daughter who find they’ve switched bodies — began as a 1972 novel and became a movie in 1976 (with Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster), 1995 (Shelley Long, Gaby Hoffmann) and 2003 (Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan). The stage musical features a score by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, the Pulitzer Prize-winning team behind Next to Normal and If/Then. It had its world premiere in 2016 at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Va., and was subsequently staged at La Jolla Playhouse near San Diego, the Cleveland Play House and Houston’s Alley Theatre.
Horizon tickets begin at $25 plus fees. Shows generally run 8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 3 + 8 p.m. Saturday; and 5 p.m. Sunday. Details, tickets HERE or at 404.584.7450. The theater is at 1083 Austin Ave. at Euclid Avenue, on the edge of Little Five Points and Inman Park.
