Fall Guide: What’s coming up in theater

Red Speedo, Caught, Arcadia and more.

La Bête

High art meets low comedy in David Hirson’s 1991 hit, which opens the Arden’s 27th season. Director Emmanuelle Delpech, making her Arden debut, showcases Scott Greer as The Beast, a street performer added to a serious acting troupe. The great cast also features Alex Keiper, James Ijames, Ian Merrill Peakes and Dito van Reigersberg.

• Sept. 11-Oct. 12, Arden Theatre, 40 N. Second St., ardentheatre.org.

The Addams Family

The area’s first production of this Broadway hit — one of an endless stream of old tv shows made into musicals — is worthy of note for Charles Addams’ deliciously macabre source material and the Media Theatre’s inspired casting of Jeff Coon and Jennie Eisenhower as passionate parents Gomez and Morticia.

• Sept. 24-Nov. 2, Media Theatre, 104 E. State St., Media, Pa., mediatheatre.org.

Arcadia

Lantern Theater Company’s season opens with Tom Stoppard’s sparkling masterpiece, directed by Kathryn MacMillan and starring Charlotte Northeast and Kittson O’Neill. The 1994 Olivier Award-winning Best New Play hasn’t been produced in Philadelphia since the Wilma Theater inaugurated their Broad Street home with it in 1996.

• Sept. 25-Nov. 2, St. Stephen’s Theater, 923 Ludlow St., lanterntheater.org.

A Play, A Pie, and a Pint

Barrymore nominated Tiny Dynamite’s dinnertime series of one-act plays returns for its fourth season with four plays, each performed Thursday, Friday and Sunday at 6:30 p.m. with pie (pizza) and pint (beer or soda) included. Inis Nua brings David Greig’s The Letter of Last Resort Oct. 2-5, Barrymore-nominated host theater Tiny Dynamite produces Caryl Churchill’s A Number Oct. 9-12, Azuka presents Douglas Maxwell’s A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity Oct. 16-19 and InterAct premieres local playwright Emma Goidel’s We Can All Agree to Pretend This Never Happened

• Oct. 23-26. Oct. 2-26. Red Room at Society Hill Playhouse, 507 S. Eighth St., tinydynamite.org.

So Much Shakespeare

Each season’s Shakespeare productions are a festival in themselves. October starts with Macbeth performed outdoors, in Hawthorne Park, by ambitious newcomers Revolution Shakespeare Theatre Revolution (Oct. 3-12). The Quintessence Theatre Group’s fall season begins with one cast performing history play Richard II (Oct. 9-Nov. 9) and comedy As You Like It (Oct. 1-Nov. 8), both directed by Alexander Burns, in rotating repertory. The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre returns to fall productions with Henry V, directed by Aaron Cromie, who staged their magical summer production of Love’s Labour’s Lost (Oct. 22-Nov. 16). Hedgerow’s Hamlet is billed as their “fall thriller,” a big step up from their usual Agatha Christie, with artistic director Jared Reed assailing the title role (Oct. 23-Nov. 23).

Rapture, Blister, Burn

While the Wilma’s splashiest shows — Hamlet and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead — happen in the spring, the season starts with the welcome return of playwright Gina Gionfriddo, whose Becky Shaw was a Barrymore-winning hit for Blanka Zizka’s company. Rapture, Blister, Burn features Krista Apple-Hodge as a celebrity professor reuniting with her best pals from graduate school.

• Oct. 8-Nov. 2, Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., wilmatheater.org.

Caught

Japanese-Canadian playwright and director Rick Shiomi joins InterAct Theatre to direct Christopher Chen’s new drama about a Chinese artist who survived a prison camp — or did he? Terrific local actors Justin Jain and Bi Jean Ngo are featured.

• Oct. 24-Nov. 16, InterAct Theatre Company at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., interacttheatre.org.

Red Speedo

Lucas Hnath’s stylish play about Olympic swimming, the perils of competition and the American Dream of equality is the most provocative Theatre Exile title since last fall’s Cock, also directed by Deborah Block.

• Oct. 30-Nov. 23, Theatre Exile at Studio X, 1340 S. 13th St., theatreexile.org.

The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence

Madeleine George’s Pulitzer finalist receives its local premiere with Azuka Theatre, and connects three famous Watsons — Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick, Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant and the Artificial Super Intelligence featured on TV’s Jeopardy! — with Josh Watson, an IT guru for a local Dweeb Team. How much is communication aided, and thwarted, by technology?

• Nov. 5-23, Off-Broad Street Theater, 1636 Sansom St., azukatheatre.org.