British director/writer David Farr’s hilarious, freewheeling adaptation of Gogol’s The Government Inspector thrilled London audiences in 2006, where its sharp satire skewered government fraud in a fictionalized former Soviet republic.  To bring the comedy home, Next asked Victory Gardens Ensemble member James Sherman to craft a hero hailing from Chicago . Jim’s creation, the washed-up real estate salesman Michael Fitzgerald Murphy, exploits his mistaken identity as the dreaded UN Inspector for all it’s worth, revealing corruption, conspiracies and cover-ups at the highest levels of power.  Starring Joe Dempsey as Murphy, Susan Hart and Bill McGough as the glamorous and greedy President and First Lady, and Joseph Wycoff as a bumbling member of the cabinet.

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WELL By Lisa Kron Directed by Damon Kiely Chicago-area Premiere November 13 – December 14, 2008

Tony Award nominee Lisa Kron puts herself onstage in this quirky and delicious memoir about her mother’s fight for racial integration and healthy communities in Lansing , Michigan . But Kron’s self-assured character is defeated – and deconstructed – in the retelling by her own mother, who occupies a La-Z-Boy at the edge of the stage.  At first grudgingly, then energetically, Kron’s mother Ann takes over the memoir, recalling and revealing the fiery sprit beneath her lifetime of illness.  Ann buddies up with the rest of Lisa’s cast, derailing her smart and savvy performance about social and physical health, and instead weaves a funny and touching story of her daughter’s growing up.  “Kron’s hilarious, deeply affecting play cuts to the core of the mother-daughter relationship” – Entertainment Weekly

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Can one man stop an empire?  In 1936, Czech-born Karel Čapek wrote a spooky, fantastical novel about the discovery of an intelligent race of giant salamanders, which humanity enslaves for profit and nationalist advantage.  While countries use them to redraw borders and alter the world’s balance of power, the newts revolt, and begin flooding the planet to make more room for their super-race.   Next Theatre Artistic Director Jason Loewith (Adding Machine: A Musical) works with artistic associate Justin D.M. Palmer and noted puppetmaker Michael Montenegro (The Long Christmas Ride Home, Argonautika) to adapt this incredibly timely satire about a global economy planting the seeds of its own destruction.

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With his tenure at risk, Professor Jack Exley uproots his family from Illinois to Rwanda on the eve of the genocide to interview a mysterious doctor about his AIDS treatment program.  When the doctor vanishes without a trace, the family finds itself lost in sea of changing stories and shifting alliances. A hit in London in 2006 and off-Broadway in 2007, The Overwhelming is a potent, gripping drama about the challenges facing a progressive American in a foreign country on the brink of disaster.