For this season’s Bravo, pack your suitcase and grab your passport because the local performing arts scene is about to send you on a rip-roaring trip around the world. Head to London and release the hounds with Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure (Very Little Theatre) and then brush up your British sensibility at the Cottage Theatre with productions of Angel Street, The Secret Garden and Much Ado About Nothing.
Feeling cheeky? University Theater’s The Importance of Being Ernest offers a dose of Oscar Wilde, while Ballet Fantastique’s Pride and Prejudice adds a splash of Jane Austen. Next, head south to France for VLT’s brazen La Cage aux Folles (the original The Birdcage) and then join the revolution for the Actors Cabaret of Eugene’s Les Misérables. Keep going south to romantic Venice, where you’ll witness The Misadventures of Casanova (Ballet Fantastique). Hop the Mediterranean to the Middle East, where the lives of Iraqi women spring to life in 9 Faces of Desire (University Theatre). Travel due east to China for the New Shanghai Circus (Hult Center) and then sail the Andamen Sea to India for the Eugene Ballet Company’s Mowgli: The Jungle Book Ballet before heading to Africa for the UO’s Dance Africa and the South African Lady Smith Black Mambazo (The Shedd). Cross the Atlantic and learn about Central American folklore through bilingual productions of ¡Bocón! (The Majestic Theater) before returning to the good ol’ U.S.A.
Revel in the American jazz tradition with the Oregon Jazz Festival and see the best of New World theater with productions like the Pulitzer Prize-winning Next to Normal (Lord Leebrick). Come the end of summer, you will be impressing or annoying the bloody hell out of your friends with your new cosmopolitan habits: drinking tea with biscuits (and a stiff upper lip), mastering the clicks of Zulu, debating international policy, using words like gauche and rattling on about the proletariat. See listings for details.