Red Herring Theater Company unveils 2022 season of comedies and dramas

On Dec 18, 2021

Michael Herring, artistic director of Red Herring Theater Company, which will begin its 2022 season Jan. 13,
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Red Herring Theater Company will produce comedies and some dramas for its 2022 season on the South Side.

“We’re leaning into comedies because ‘laughter is the best medicine,’” said Michael Herring, the company’s co-founder and artistic director.

“The last couple of years have been rough on all of us and it doesn’t look like it’s going to getting any easier anytime soon. So we want to make audiences laugh, while still challenging them with new ideas and new perspectives,” Herring said.

This will be the 8-year-old troupe’s most ambitious season yet, Herring said, with an almost-monthly schedule of 10 plays, mostly new to Columbus. When he “beta-tested” 10 productions within one year in 2019, the audience grew by 34 percent, Herring said, adding that progress was interrupted by a pandemic-driven 18-month shutdown.

“Now that we’ve reopened for in-person audiences, we’re scaling up again. We’re either going to go big or … go home,” he said.

All performances will take place at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays at 3723 S. High St.

• “The Schedule,” Jan. 13-30: The mistaken-identity farce, a world premiere by Columbus writer Sheldon Gleisser, focuses on a Hollywood teen idol whose manager tries to fix a potentially career-destroying mix-up between a Rolling Stone magazine interviewer and a high-class call girl.

• “Dancing Lessons,” Feb. 17 to March 6: Mark St. Germain’s offbeat romantic comedy, a Midwest premiere, revolves around a brilliant young professor with Asperger’s syndrome who hires his talented but cranky neighbor to teach him how to dance, with unexpected insights for both.

• “A Behanding in Spokane,” March 24 to April 10: The Broadway black comedy, the first play set in America by award-winning English film/stage writer-director Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges,” “The Pillowman,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”), revolves around a killer searching for his missing left hand, a bickering couple with a hand to sell and a hotel clerk averse to gunfire.

• “The Legend of Georgia McBride,” May 5-22: Matthew Lopez’s touching showbiz comedy, a Columbus premiere, centers on a broke Elvis impersonator, who, after learning his girlfriend is pregnant, is forced to fill in for a drag queen only to discover its rewards in fame and fortune.

• “Silent Sky,” June 9-26: Lauren Gunderson’s bio-drama, a Columbus premiere, focuses on 19th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, whose astronomical advances also sparked social progress in how the culture viewed a woman’s place in science and society.

• “Waiting for Waiting for Godot,“ July 14-31: Dave Hanson’s comedy, an Ohio premiere of the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival hit, centers on two hapless understudies occupying time backstage during a production of Samuel Beckett’s classic existential drama while trying to understand art, theater and life.

• “The Niceties,” Aug. 18 to Sept. 4: A regional premiere, Eleanor Burgess’s contemporary drama about race, history and power is sparked by a Black college student called into her professor’s office to discuss her paper about slavery and the American Revolution.

• “Airness,” Sept. 22 to Oct. 9: Chelsea Marcantel’s inspirational comedy, a Columbus premiere, revolves around a girl entering her first air-guitar competition who befriends a group of charismatic nerds and discovers more than she imagines about art and joy.

• “The Birds,” Oct. 27 to Nov. 13: Conor McPherson’s suspense drama, an Ohio premiere, focuses on two strangers sheltering in a small summer cabin for survival. It is based on Daphne du Maurier’s short story that inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s film about mysterious attacking birds.