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Signature Theatre has released their planned 2012-2013 season:

• The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, August – October 2012
• Dying City, October – November 2012
• Dreamgirls, November 2012- January 2013
• Shakespeare’s R&J, February – March 2013
• Hello, Dolly!, March – May 2013
• Crimes of the Heart, April 2013
• Company, May – June 2013

Schedule is subject to change due to performance rights conflicts or other issues. Here are the details about each production, as provided by Signature Theatre:

• The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas
  Book by Larry L. King and Peter Masterson
  Music & Lyrics by Carol Hall
  Directed by Eric Schaeffer

  It was the nicest little…whorehouse you ever saw. Signature Theatre launches its 2012/2013 season with this exciting new production of the Tony Award®- winning hit musical comedy. Inspired by the real-life Chicken Ranch in La Grange, Texas, Miss Mona’s brothel and her lovely ladies come to life on the Signature stage. When crusading television watchdog Melvin P. Thorpe ogles the whorehouse as his next moral target, Miss Mona, Her bevy of working girls, and Sherriff Ed Earl Dodd must buck the muckraker to keep the ranch open. A gritty satire about moral hypocrisy and media sensationalism, this musical makes for the perfect election-year event!

  Grab your partner because this show will have you two-steppin’ and boot-scootin’ in the aisles with a score that includes, “Twenty Fans,” “Girl, You’re a Woman,” “Twenty-Four Hours of Lovin,'” and “Hard Candy Christmas,” along with the new musical number “A Friend to Me.”

• Dying City
  Washington Premiere
  Written by Christopher Shinn
  Directed by Matthew Gardiner

  One year after his identical twin brother, Craig’s, suspicious death in Iraq, Peter shows up unannounced at his sister-in-law Kelly’s apartment. Having not spoken since the funeral, Peter and Kelly face off in a passive-aggressive battle rooted in half-truths and betrayal. Their emotionally brutal skirmish intersperses with flashbacks of Craig’s final night home before deployment.

• Dreamgirls
  Book and Lyrics by Tom Eyen
  Music by Henry Krieger
  Original Broadway production directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett
  Orchestrations by Harold Wheeler
  Directed by Matthew Gardiner

  Winner of 6 Tony Awards® including “Best Musical,” 1981

  First a smash on Broadway, then an Oscar Award®-winning motion picture, Dreamgirls captures the spirit and hope of Motown when a struggling girl group from Chicago makes it big. In a business controlled by men, the female trio fights for recognition, fellowship, and love as superstardom challenges their musical and cultural identity. A rich, glowing spectacle about the price of show-biz success, Dreamgirls sizzles with sparkling dance and R&B soul.

  This special holiday event at Signature Theatre features the hit songs “Dreamgirls,” “And I Am Telling You,” and “One Night Only.”

• Shakespeare’s R&J
  The Acclaimed Play
  Adapted and Directed by Joe Calarco

  Four young men. One scarf. Shakespeare’s transcendent saga of forbidden love is reimagined in a brave and bold in-the-round setting.

  A repressive, all-male Catholic boarding school bans Romeo and Juliet in favor of Latin conjugations and the Ten Commandments. Four students unearth a secret copy and steal into the night to recite the prohibited tale of adolescent passion. While it begins as a lark, the story gradually draws the boys into a discovery of universal truth that parallels their own coming-of-age. A riveting drama within a drama, Shakespeare’s R&J transcends the boundaries between play and player.

• Hello, Dolly!
  The Great American Musical – in a co-production with Ford’s Theatre!
  Book by Michael Stewart
  Music & Lyrics by Jerry Herman
  Based on the Play “The Matchmaker” by Thornton Wilder
  Directed by Eric Schaeffer

  Winner of 10 Tony Awards®, including “Best Musical”

  One of the greatest musicals ever written, Hello, Dolly! brings to life the tale of Dolly Levi and celebrates the search for love.

  In an inspired new production, Signature Theatre joins forces with Ford’s Theatre to reinterpret this glorious classic tale. Playing matchmaker for herself this time, Dolly woos the impervious Mr. Horace Vandergelder, while also finding mates for two bumbling shopkeepers and persuading Horace to approve his niece’s marriage – all in a day’s work! Hello, Dolly! is a delectable treat for the whole family.

  Eric Schaeffer directs this classic American musical based on Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker. Featuring the unforgettable songs “Put On Your Sunday Clothes,” “Elegance,” and “Hello, Dolly!,” this lush new production – staged at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC – promises to delight!

• Crimes of The Heart
  Written by Beth Henley
  Directed by Aaron Posner

  A new production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Acclaimed director Aaron Posner (Theater J’s The Chosen, Folger Theatre’s Arcadia and Orestes: A Tragic Romp) makes his Signature Theatre debut with a new interpretation of Beth Henley’s dark comic-tragedy.

  The three eccentric Magrath sisters, reunite at their Old Granddaddy’s home in Mississippi when Babe, the youngest, shoots her husband because she “didn’t like his looks.” The quintessential dysfunctional family, the sisters must now deal with past relationships and past resentments, while also trying to come to terms with the consequences of their crimes from their heart. Emotionally deranged and laugh-out-loud funny, Crimes of the Heart ignites a tragically comic family feud of epic scale.

• Company
  Sondheim. Signature’s Signature.
  Book by George Furth
  Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
  Directed by Eric Schaeffer

  Fresh from directing the critically acclaimed production of Sondheim’s Follies on Broadway, Eric Schaeffer brings a new production of Company to the Signature stage – produced here for the first time in 20 years.

  On his 35th birthday, Bobby, a commitment-phobic bachelor, searches for the answers to love and life in New York City. While enjoying the company of some lovely ladies, he observes both the joys and pitfalls of marriage from his five quirky couple friends. But is he ready? Only Bobby can find the answer in this witty and piercing examination of matrimony. For how else can you treat marriage, but as a comedy?

  This “Best Musical” Tony Award®-winner is pure Sondheim, featuring classics including “Being Alive,” “Side by Side,” “Another Hundred People,” and “The Ladies Who Lunch.”