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Wallis 2016-17 season to feature Simon McBurney, Peter Brook, plus ‘Merrily We Roll Along’

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, with Beverly Hills City Hall off in the distance.
(Genero Molina / Los Angeles Times)
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The 2016-17 season at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts will boast a prestigious international lineup, with recent productions by Simon McBurney and Peter Brook making stops at the Beverly Hills venue.

As part of the new slate, which begins in September, the Wallis said Wednesday that it will present its own production of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along” and a new Deaf West Theatre co-production of Edward Albee’s “At Home at the Zoo.”

As previously reported, Michael Arden will serve as the Wallis’ first artist in residence. The director, up for a Tony Award this year for “Spring Awakening,” will stage “Merrily” (Nov. 22 to Dec. 18) as well as a new production of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s acclaimed drama “The Pride” (June 6 to July 30, 2017).

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McBurney will star in the Complicite production of “The Encounter” (April 6 to 16, 2017), which the actor also directed. The production, which received raves when it ran at the Edinburgh International Festival and at the Barbican in London this year, is inspired by the adventures of American photographer Loren McIntyre in the Brazilian rainforest.

“Battlefield” (May 24-28, 2017), adapted and directed by Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne, revisits Brook’s seminal stage piece “Mahabharata.” The production ran this year at the Young Vic theater in London and is touring internationally.

Albee’s “At Home at the Zoo” (March 7 to 26, 2017) will feature Deaf West’s signature style that will incorporate sign language into the telling of the playwright’s expanded version of his classic “The Zoo Story.”

Other theatrical offerings include the return of England’s Kneehigh Theatre with “946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips” (Feb. 9 to March 5, 2017), a D-Day-themed drama adapted from the Michael Morpurgo novella. Paul Crewes, the new artistic director of the Wallis, formerly served as the head of Kneehigh.

The Wallis line-up also includes an unconventional update of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” from the Filter Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Co.; Leif Ove Andsnes and Marc-André Hamelin in a two-piano concert; and dance productions from Matthew Bourne and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. An evening celebrating dance great Carmen de Lavallade’s 85th birthday also will be part of the season’s dance schedule.

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For the Record

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An earlier version of this article misspelled Marc-André Hamelin’s last name as Hamel.

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The cabaret series For the Record will come to the Wallis to present “Scorsese: American Crime Requiem” (Sept. 21 to Oct. 16), an ode to the New York filmmaker and the soundtracks to his movies.

david.ng@latimes.com

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