The theme of Circle Theatre's 2025 season is "Ignite," and its lineup is certainly turning up the heat with three musicals on tap and a reimagined second performance space.
The big "get" of the season is Michael R. Jackson's A Strange Loop, which won not only the 2022 Tony Award for Best Musical but also the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020. This will be the musical's regional premiere, following its runs on Broadway and in the West End that both concluded in 2023.
But let's start at the beginning of Circle's 44th season:
Destroying David is a world premiere by Jason Odell Williams where an enigmatic art restorer intertwines Michelangelo's statue’s fascinating history with their own deeply personal story. It examines perceptions of beauty, resilience, and the quest for redemption in a confrontation between artistry and anguish. It runs January 30-February 22, 2025.
The action next moves into the theater's recently renovated lobby for Ain't Misbehavin', the musical conceived in 1978 by Richard Maltby Jr. and Murray Horwitz, and with music by Thomas “Fats” Waller.
Renamed The Velvet Lounge, the lobby will now host cabarets, special performances, and a fully immersive musical like this one, where audiences will travel back in time to 1929 and experience the exuberance of the Harlem Renaissance. There will only eight performances, with 40 seats available each night. It runs March 6-15, 2025.
The regional premiere of Lauren Yee's The Hatmaker's Wife is full of magical realism and fantastical adventure.
When a young woman and her boyfriend move into their new home, they uncover the magical history of its previous occupants: a distracted hatmaker and his long-suffering wife, who has left him, taking his beloved hat along with her. Walls literally talk, words appear out of nowhere, a house comes alive, and, obviously, there's a golem with a softness for Cheetos. It runs April 17-May 10, 2025.
Now it's time for A Strange Loop. It's a bold and exhilarating dive into the life of Usher, a Black queer musical theater writer navigating his identity, creativity, and personal challenges as he crafts a show about his own complex journey. With its raw, adult themes and vital exploration of the queer Black experience, this musical offers a unique blend of song and storytelling that is intensely relevant, and vitally important. It runs June 19-July 12, 2025.
Adrienne Warren and Nick Jonas are about to star as Cathy and Jamie in The Last Five Years, but Fort Worth audiences will get Jason Robert Brown's musical shortly after its Broadway run.
"The Last Five Years" film starred Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan.Courtesy photo
This critically acclaimed musical delves into the five-year romance between Cathy and Jamie through a unique narrative structure: Cathy’s story unfolds from the end of their relationship moving backward, while Jamie’s perspective moves forward from the start. It runs August 14-September 6, 2025.
The season closes with Mac Beth, adapted by Erica Schmidt from William Shakespeare's classic play. After school, seven teenage girls convene in an abandoned lot. They drop their backpacks, transform their uniforms, and dive into a DIY retelling of Macbeth. As the girls conjure kings, warriors, and witches, Shakespeare’s bloody tale seeps into their reality. It runs October 9-November 1, 2025.
"We invite you to witness how art reflects and reshapes the human experience by sparking conversations, building communities, and igniting our minds," says artistic director Ashley H. White. "Circle Theatre’s 44th season is its biggest ever, and it has something for everyone."
More information and tickets can be found here.
