A big, splashy swan song called ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’

Bud Martin is retiring this year after a decade as executive and artistic director of the Wilmington-based Delaware Theatre Co. He wanted to go out with a big, splashy production.

He chose to direct One Man, Two Guvnors, Richard Bean’s English rework of the 1743 Commedia dell’arte-style comedy Servant of Two Masters by Italian playwright Carlo Goldini.

When Martin saw it in New York several years ago, he laughed very hard in the theater. “It was so brilliantly staged,” he said, “that I thought, ‘This is one I want to do someday.’ It’s so much fun, but it’s not a piece of cake to put it on stage.

“It’s a big show for not being a musical — it has a lot of scenes and set changes that take place. There is a band that plays during the scene changes. It’s a technically challenging show with a cast of 11. And, it’s really funny with a lot of physical comedy — meaning pratfalls and fights,” Martin said.

He studied acting and spent years in New York acting and directing until “I saw my children were looking skinny,” he joked. So, he switched gears, got into investment banking, and became successful investing in companies and taking them public.

One night in December 2007, he received a phone call from the CEO of Walgreens. They wanted to buy I-trax/CHD Meridian, the Chadds Ford worksite health-care provider company that Martin was running. They offered to pay “a significant premium to where our stock was playing” on the market, he said.

Half an hour later, Martin received a second phone call — this one from Act 2 Playhouse in Ambler, asking him if he would become its artistic director.

“The timing might be just right,” he mused at the time. Martin accepted both offers and returned to theater, first at Act 2 and then to the Delaware Theatre Co.

The contacts he had made earlier on Broadway helped him bring the failing Wilmington theater company back to life as a pre-Broadway testing ground for new shows.

With his financial background, Martin was able to begin his tenure by consolidating mortgages and negotiating a new line of credit.

“I have found that a lot of nonprofit arts organizations don’t know how to live within their means,” he said. “Somehow, they think that people are going to contribute enough money to see them through. You can’t count on donors to come in and save you.”

(Feb. 1-19, “One Man, Two Guvnors,” Delaware Theatre Co., 200 Water St., Wilmington, 302-594-1100 or delawaretheatre.org)

The actors describe themselves as “a gaggle of Indians chock full of cynicism and a good dose of indigenous satire,” and as a “sketch comedy group based in the wooded ghettos of Minnesota and buffalo grass of Oklahoma.”

That’s the 1491s for you. The intertribal group, which wrote the hit series Reservation Dogs, is bringing its irreverent comedy Between Two Knees to Princeton’s McCarter Theatre. “It speaks to the power of comedy as a powerful tool of resistance, fostering resilience and empowering healing,” Sarah Rasmussen, McCarter’s artistic director, said in a news release. “We are taking comedy seriously here at McCarter.”

(Jan. 31-Feb. 12, “Between Two Knees,” McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, 609-258-2787 or mccarter.org)

As an art form, theater works hard to connect us with different cultures and views, but what happens when all that earnest good-heartedness goes wrong? That’s the premise behind Kiss, directed by Fadi Skeiker, a Syrian-born University of the Arts professor. Four American actors perform a Syrian soap opera, but mid-play everything changes as the actors realize the limits of their cultural understanding.

(Jan. 31-Feb. 19, “Kiss,” Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., Phila. 215-546-7824 or wilmatheater.org)

» READ MORE: In ‘Kiss,’ actors try a Syrian soap opera with cringey results — and that’s the point

What starts out as the perfect romantic evening — complete with a marriage proposal — unravels when the groom-to-be reveals that he bought tickets to a music festival organized by a controversial recording artist. J. Paul Nicholas directs Ang Bey and Abdul Sesay in The Light by Loy A. Webb at Theatre Exile.

(Feb. 2-26, “The Light,” Theatre Exile, 1340 S. 13th St., Phila. 215-218-4022 or theatreexile.org)

On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., exhausted, returned to Memphis’ Lorraine Motel after delivering his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. A day later, he would be shot dead in the motel.

Katori Hall’s play, The Mountaintop, imagines what happened in between, particularly later in the evening on April 3. In the play, presented by Uptown! Knauer Performing Arts Center, a mysterious stranger knocks on King’s door, forcing him to confront both his future and legacy.

The production includes original music by JBD Musicworks, drawing on sounds from Memphis and Philadelphia, and from gospel singers with First Calvary Church of God in Christ in Coatesville.

(Feb. 1-19, “The Mountaintop,” Uptown! Knauer Performing Arts Center, Roy A. Smith Mainstage, 226 High St., West Chester, 610-356-2787 or uptown.westchester.org)

Check with individual venues for COVID-19 protocols.