Photo By Cortny Helmick

Double duty: Joe McDonough's work graces both the Playhouse and ETC stages this month.

Cincinnati playwright Joe McDonough offers two world premieres this month

Joe McDonough has something in common with Stephen Sondheim: A production of the Cincinnati playwright's show, Stone My Heart, which opens this week at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, was in rehearsal while Sondheim's Company was being readied for its own much-heralded premiere. In fact, McDonough and Sondheim were in the building simultaneously.

But the 1980 Purcell High grad has bested Sondheim, who's had only two works staged locally during the 2005-06 theater season. By the end of April, McDonough will have had three scripts produced in Cincinnati this season.

In addition to Stone My Heart, his holiday musical Cinderella was staged at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati last December. Later this month another new play by McDonough, Wayfarer's Rest, has its initial production at ETC.

For the self-effacing and modest writer, it's almost an embarrassment of riches and attention. But not quite, since he laughingly suggests, "I'm hoping both will be enormous national successes."

The truth is that McDonough is building a firm foundation for national recognition. It's a big deal that the Playhouse awarded Stone My Heart with its second annual Mickey Kaplan New American Play prize. Playhouse Producing Artistic Director Ed Stern will direct the show, inspired by Shakespeare's Othello, although it's set in a very contemporary morgue in Chicago. Stern also selected and directed the world premiere of McDonough's One, a play consisting of three interrelated dramatic monologues, for his 2003-04 season.

The playwright is equally pleased that D. Lynn Meyers, ETC's producing artistic director, chose to schedule the premiere of Wayfarer's Rest (which she'll direct) to overlap with Stone My Heart at the Playhouse. Meyers has regularly employed McDonough for the theater's holiday shows -- in addition to Cinderella, ETC has produced The Frog Princess (1997 and 2002), Alice in Wonderland (1998 and 2003), Around the World in 80 Days (1999), Sleeping Beauty (2000 and 2004) and The Adventures of Pinocchio (2001).

It's not the first time that the Playhouse and ETC have offered simultaneous productions of works by one playwright -- they did so with Irish playwright Martin McDonagh in 2000 and legendary American writer Lanford Wilson in 2001 -- but it's certainly the first time a Cincinnati playwright has had works running (not to mention premiering) at the city's two most established professional theaters at the same time.

Stone My Heart follows a tale of misdirected and manipulated love affairs, jealousies and treacheries in a modern setting.

"People not familiar with Othello won't be lost," McDonough says. "But if they know the story, they'll see where my story came from."

He explains that he started with Shakespeare's classic tragedy but evolved the plot and focus. "There are parallels, but not point-to-point comparisons," he adds.

"The characters in Stone My Heart are totally compelling," Stern says. "Joe has created a spiral that gets tighter and tighter -- with all the things that are said and unsaid, with the characters' abilities to communicate or not communicate. Plus the subject, while intense, is punctuated by such dark, rich humor."

There's a lot of humor in Wayfarer's Rest, too, but the play comes from a very different inspiration. During a tech rehearsal for one of ETC's holiday musicals, McDonough says he was sitting quietly while various staging issues were being addressed and was admittedly a little bored.

"I asked myself, 'What if I wrote an adult fairytale?'" he says. "I worked up a draft and shared it with Lynn, and she jumped all over it."

He says the story didn't become a fairytale as he first imagined, although two of the story's three characters have mystical powers.

In Wayfarer's Rest, an American woman living in rural England during World War II (played by local actress Annie Fitzpatrick) meets two unusual strangers (Bruce Cromer and Kate Wilford) who have the uncanny ability to see the future.

"It's not as dark as Stone My Heart," McDonough says, which he adds definitely isn't for kids. "But it has its dark moments. It's certainly not Brigadoon! These two plays are not two sides of the same coin. These are different plays set in different worlds.

"Stone My Heart is more real, more contemporary. I hope the show is gripping and unexpectedly funny. I think it will be unsettling for some people. Wayfarer's Rest has more historical distance and a lot of suspense, but it's also very moving in a way that will stick with people."

Perhaps the differences between the two scripts will help him while he runs back and forth between ETC's space in Over-the-Rhine and the Playhouse in Mount Adams. Perhaps during the running he'll finally figure out how he became a playwright -- he majored in English at UC, intending to be a writer of fiction but quickly opting for the world of theater.

"I enjoy the whole process," McDonough says. "I like the writing, which I do alone. I like the first reading when we begin talking about the play. I like the rehearsal process. I like opening night, although the next day is depressing -- when I'm done."

McDonough particularly resonates with the human connection of theater.

"Novelists don't get to see people read their works," he says. "I get to see my characters come to life and to watch audiences react."

Especially this month.