Audra McDonald in Provincetown before Broadway + more shows at Cape Cod theaters (including Rachel York)

Broadway is big at both ends of the Cape this week, as star Audra McDonald returns to Provincetown on Sunday, and Rachel York performs her latest one-woman show Friday and Saturday in partnership with College Light Opera Company in Falmouth. To read more about McDonald's plans here and soon on Broadway, see below.

Also new is Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater’s area premiere that is set in the past, but has much to say about the present. For laughs, the Academy of Performing Arts is staging "Something Rotten," a musical farce set in the Renaissance. And the Cotuit Center for the Arts presents the story of people in a small town whose lives are changed by a drama class.

At our website https://www.capecodtimes.com/entertainment, you'll find reviews of recently opened shows that include those playing at Cotuit Center for the Arts, Cape Rep Theatre in Brewster, Harbor Stage Company in Wellfleet, Cape Playhouse in Dennis and Cape Cod Theatre Company/Harwich Junior Theatre.

A play about history (or is it)?

Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater rounds out its summer offerings, with Lauren Gunderson’s “The Revolutionists,” which it describes as “an irreverent, girl-powered comedy” set during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror that is “about violence and legacy, art and activism, feminism and terrorism, compatriots and chosen sisters, and how we actually go about changing the world.” The characters are Playwright Olympe de Gouges, assassin Charlotte Corday, former queen Marie Antoinette, and Haitian rebel Marianne Angelle.

Christopher Ostrom, WHAT artistic director, said earlier this summer that the play’s messages have proven to be timely, considering the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v. Wade abortion decision. The play is “the story of four women who band together to form a revolution as they see that the rights of women have been left out of the declaration of rights in France,” Ostrom said. While it’s a hilarious comedy, “it’s about the necessity of women to band together to advocate for their rights.”

Shows run Aug. 27-Sept. 17 (with previews Aug. 25 and 26) at WHAT, 2357 State Highway Route 6, Wellfleet; 508-349-9428, http://www.what.org/.

There's 'Something Rotten' in Orleans

Two brothers, Nick and Nigel Bottom, set out to write the world’s first musical in what the Academy of Performing Arts describes as a "hilarious mash-up of 16th-century Shakespeare and 21st-first-century Broadway." In the group's next show, it's the 1590s, and the brothers need a hit but are overshadowed by "The Bard" until a local soothsayer tells them the future of theater involves singing and dancing.

The musical was created by Grammy Award-winning songwriter Wayne Kirkpatrick, and screenwriters Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell. Shows are at 7 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays Aug. 25-Sept. 11 at the Academy Playhouse, 210 Main St., Orleans; https://www.academyplayhouse.org/.

How theater can affect life

Playwright Annie Baker has described her "Circle Mirror Transformation" drama as “a strange little naturalistic meditation on theater and life and death and the passing of time.” The plot: In tiny Shirley, Vermont, four people enroll in Marty’s six-week-long adult creative drama class: Lauren (a high-schooler who enrolled to learn “real” acting), Schultz (a carpenter and furniture artist), Theresa (an actress who recently relocated to Vermont from New York), and James (Marty’s husband).

The plot description says that as the class goes on, "hearts are quietly torn apart, and tiny wars of epic proportions are waged and won ... (and) all five characters learn to express true vulnerability." Shows, directed by Celia Krefter, are at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 4 p.m. Sundays Aug. 25-Sept. 11 at the center, 4404 Falmouth Road/Route 28. Tickets: $25, $20 for members; artsonthecape.org or 508-428-0669.

Broadway’s Rachel York to perform one-woman show

Award-winning Broadway actress and singer Rachel York (“Victor/Victoria,” “Anything Goes”) will bring her one-woman show “For the Love of It” to end the summer for The College Light Opera Company in Falmouth. Her two performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Aug. 26-27 at Lucas Hall on the CLOC campus at 54 Chapoquoit Road, West Falmouth.

“For the Love of It” is an evening of stories and song, which will include numbers made famous by her early inspirations, favorite tunes from her Broadway career, jazz standards from her solo album “Let’s Fall in Love” and more.

York has television credits but is best known for performances on Broadway, in London’s West End, and on national tour in shows that include “City of Angels,” “Les Misérables,” “Victor/Victoria” (Drama Desk Award), “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” Kiss Me, Kate (filmed in London for PBS), “Camelot” (Carbonell Award), “Anything Goes” (Helen Hayes Award and most recently in London last fall) and the recent “Head Over Heels.”

Tickets: $40. Reservations and information: http://www.collegelightoperacompany.com/. Patrons are strongly encouraged to wear masks during the performance.

Audra McDonald's back in Provincetown

Broadway/TV actress Audra McDonald, the top Tony Award winner of all time, will be back Aug. 28 for her second Provincetown show in three months and says she is looking forward to “48 hours of pure joy” there.

The busy performer will return to Provincetown Town Hall with music director/host Seth Rudetsky to present a completely different show that the two friends for more than 30 years decided they wanted to do during a bike ride before the Memorial Day weekend performance.

“I just love going to P-town,” she said in a phone interview. “I wanted to come back and so we had sort of broached the idea of saying something to our producer, Mark Cortale, and we mentioned it to him, then we sort of threw him under the bus by announcing (at the May show) that we wanted to come back, so he kind of got roped into it.” She laughs. “We were being bad children and we got our way.”

McDonald, though, can’t detail how the Aug. 28 show will be different because she says she doesn’t know. Part of Rudetsky’s sing-and-chat format is to surprise his guests with what song they’re going to perform next, sometimes based on where the conversation and career reminiscences have led.

“It can be very daunting to do a concert where it's just you, there’s no fourth wall, and you can’t hide behind a character. That’s a very serious, very vulnerable place to be,” McDonald says. “So Seth’s format of doing these concerts just makes it so much easier.

"And I think people respond to these concerts because he's able to draw out who people really are and because he's so disarming and so fun and so spontaneous that you're never quite sure where the show is going to go and what’s going to happen. But it feels very safe. You're allowed to be who you actually are and Seth celebrates that.”

Rudetsky is a multi-hyphenate who hosts Sirius XM radio shows and Broadway-themed cruises; writes books, plays, and columns for Playbill; has accompanied numerous Broadway shows; and has led fundraisers with producer husband James Wesley for many causes and charities around the country, including hundreds of virtual shows during the pandemic to raise money for the Actors Fund.

His knowledge of Broadway is encyclopedic. That personal and/or professional knowledge of Broadway guests and shows makes the “Broadway @” shows — which  originated in Provincetown and he's now done internationally — much easier on the performers, McDonald said.

“Seth makes it different (each time). He doesn't tell you what the order is going to be, he doesn't tell you, of your repertoire, which songs he has chosen, and a lot of times … you don't even know what song he's talking about until he starts a chord because he’s still not telling you,” she said. “It keeps you on your toes, but it’s always a good time.”

“You feel safe too,” she added. “I mean, if you mess up, it's no big deal. We're all there just to sort of have this Holy Communion amongst each other, so if you mess up, you start over. It feels pretty low-risk.”

Unlike her quick trip to Provincetown in May, McDonald says she’ll have her family — which includes Broadway actor Will Swenson and their kindergarten-age daughter — with her for the Cape weekend this time. Provincetown is a favorite place for them and McDonald talks about what so many other visitors to the end of the Cape enjoy: walking down Commercial Street, “incredible dinners,” going on a whale watch, biking and going to the beach.

“(We’re) just going to BE and soak up the energy and the peacefulness and the joy that P-town exudes. You can sort of forget your cares for a minute.”

Varied career includes 'Good Fight'

While she’ll be working for the Town Hall performance, the break for some seaside getaway time will launch the family into a busy fall.

McDonald, who has two Grammys and one Emmy among her many awards, is a multi-hyphenate herself. In 2015, she was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people and received a National Medal of Arts — the country's highest arts honor — from President Barack Obama. She has a classically trained voice and has sung opera, winning her Grammys for Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Album and with “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” among her Tony-winning roles. McDonald's fall calendar, according to her website, includes concerts at both the London Palladium and Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Much of her TV and film work has had nothing to do with music, and TV work is winding down for the moment. McDonald said she is still working on filming the second season of HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” in which she plays Dorothy Scott, but filming has wrapped up on the Paramount+’s “The Good Fight,” with the sixth and final season beginning to stream Sept. 8.

McDonald’s first answer when she’s asked how she feels about the show and her character of Liz Reddick ending is “relieved,” recalling how daunting it has been to keep up with the busy TV shooting schedule that began when her daughter was just an infant. But she speaks fondly of the law-firm-set drama that launched the Paramount+ streaming service and offered topical themes, hot-button issues and a clear dislike of the 2016-2020 occupant of the White House.

“It was an honor to be a part of (the show) for all those years and I'll definitely miss being with that cast and that whole company,” she said.

Co-creators Robert and Michelle King have talked about potentially spinning off some characters as they did with "The Good Fight" being a spin-off of CBS’ “The Good Wife.” When asked about that, McDonald’s response was “never say never,” but she’s also settled with where viewers will see the show end this fall.

“Liz went through a lot, all the characters did. Sure, there could be more for Liz, but I think I'm also OK with the way they've chosen to let my character ride off into the sunset and the way that all of us are riding off into the sunset in our various ways,” McDonald said. “I'm happy with the ending they gave her.”

Back to Broadway

McDonald's next stop is instead starting anew on Broadway, with a return this fall in “Ohio State Murders,” a landmark production for several reasons — and which by the vagaries of scheduling is going to coincide in November and December with husband Swenson’s return to Broadway as the title character in “A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical.” His performance won raves in a just-closed Boston tryout that McDonald says she watched three times.

It’s a coinciding work schedule that will be difficult, McDonald acknowledged, but said, “The good thing is my play is not a long evening in the theater and my guess is that I'll probably be on my way home way before his curtain comes down so we’ll figure it out. It’s going to be an interesting fall.”

“Ohio State Murders” is clearly a show close to the heart of McDonald, an activist who gives her time to a variety of causes, is outspoken on social media and whose advocacy work includes for LGBTQAI+ rights and for Covenant House International that helps homeless and runaway youth.

In this new play, McDonald will star as writer Suzanne Alexander, who returns to her alma mater as a guest speaker and explores the violence in her work. The play has been described as a dark mystery that is “an intriguing and unusual suspense play, as well as a socially pertinent look at the destructiveness of racism in our society.”

The play is by Adrienne Kennedy, a 91-year-old writer who has never had a show on Broadway. Directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon (“A Raisin in the Sun,” “A Soldier’s Play,” “American Son”), “Ohio State Murders” will be the first to play in Broadway’s newly re-named and renovated James Earl Jones Theatre (formerly the 110-year-old Cort Theatre at 138 W. 48th St.).

Kennedy’s 65-year career includes, in March, the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy of Arts and Letters, which recognizes an entire body of work. The four others who have received it: Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller. Kennedy’s plays include Obie Award winners “Funnyhouse of a Negro,” “June and Jean in Concert” and “Sleep Deprivation Chamber.”

“I just wanted Adrienne to see her Broadway debut,” McDonald said. “It's all kind of come together in a way that feels like kismet. We're coming together … and we're going to be the very first show in the newly named James Earl Jones Theater. It feels right.”

McDonald refers to this revival as the “brainchild” of producer Jeffrey Richards, and said the group first did a reading during the pandemic-required Broadway shutdown.

“We realized a lot people need to see this, so how do we do it? How do we make this space for a woman who’s worked her entire life and deserves the opportunity to have a Broadway debut, even if we're 65 years late in getting it to happen? It’s just necessary.”

The play’s topics are as important now as decades ago, McDonald said.

“It deals with the racism of the time, the racism that still exists, the way it can be death by 1,000 cuts as far as systemic racism and then the insidious way that is built into our society. And then it can be the very overt, blatant, violent ways that racism exists in our society,” she said. “The play deals with all of that through the story of this one woman and a story that she relives in this evening in the theater.”

While not directly connected, all of the milestones “Ohio State Murders” is reaching line up with the goals of Black Theater United, which McDonald and Leon co-founded with several others in 2020. The organization’s mission includes uniting to “educate, empower, and inspire through excellence and activism in the pursuit of justice and equality (and) tell our stories, preserve our history, and ensure the legacy of Black theatre as American culture.”

Multiple recently born organizations trying to tackle systemic racism have recognized that representation, including in the theater community, is “very important,” McDonald said, and Black Theater United advocated for theaters to be named for “black theatrical icons.”

“So the fact that we are doing this play where we are finally bringing a black female to Broadway in this theater now newly named the James Earl Jones feels very poetic,” she said. “(It) just feels right. And it’s certainly something BTU is very excited about.”

Contact Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll at kdriscoll@capecodonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @KathiSDCCT.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod theater Audra McDonald in Provincetown, Broadway, Rachel York