New Shows on Old Globe Six-Play Winter Season

The Old Globe 1992 six-play winter season will feature two world premieres: a musical and a comedy and is totally contemporary.

The world premiere musical of Joan Micklin Silver’s and Julianne Boyd’s “A . . . My Name Is Still Alice” (May 14-21, mainstage) revisits the characters in their earlier popular piece “A . . . My Name Is Alice” 10 years later. It will feature most, and possibly all, of the original 1984 New York cast of “A . . . My Name Is Alice.”

“Bargains,” by Jack Heifner, who wrote “Vanities,” is a comedy about life at the markdown counter of a small-town shop. It will be staged by Globe artistic director Jack O’Brien (March 19-April 26).

Three other plays are West Coast premieres, including A.R. Gurney’s “The Old Boy” and Jon Robin Baitz’s “The Substance of Fire”--both fresh from Off Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons. Also on the schedule is Ed Schmidt’s “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting,” which was done in Chicago. A sixth play remains to be announced.

The Globe’s mainstage season begins with “Substance of Fire,” which tells the story of a New York publisher at war with America’s changing literary tastes as well as with his children. Harold Gould, responsible for bringing the show to the Globe’s attention, will star (Jan. 23-March 1).

The Cassius Carter season will begin with “The Old Boy” (Jan. 18-March 1), a drama about a distinguished WASP alumnus who returns to his old prep school only to confront mistakes in his past--specifically, the harm he did to a homosexual classmate in the guise of trying to help him hide and conform. It drew mixed notices in New York and Gurney is reportedly reworking the script.

“Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting” (May 9-June 21) centers around the historic decision made by Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey to hire Jackie Robinson as the first black to play in the major leagues. The fictional “meeting” is one Rickey calls with Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, singer Paul Robeson and boxer Joe Louis.

Much of Gurney’s work has been performed at the Globe in the past, most recently “The Snow Ball,” an Old Globe-commissioned work which opens Friday at the Huntington Theatre in Boston. Boyd directed “A . . . My Name Is Alice” here in 1989, also “Tea” (1988), “As You Like It” (1990) and “Necessities” (1991). Heifner’s “Bargains” had its start at the Old Globe’s Play Discovery Series earlier this year. Baitz and Schmidt are newcomers.

Additional directors and actors will be announced later.