The Collective Face has taken on some literary classics in its first couple of years, but more demanding — of the actors and of the staging — than Peter Shaffer’s Equus.

In the review, which I’m not going to recap here, I mention the horses and other stage elements. Here are a couple of embeds from The Collective Face’s Facebook page:

Click here for the Facebook invitation.

Equus seems an appropriately ambitious season opener for The Collective Face Theatre Ensemble. It runs from Sept. 20-Oct. 6.

Other plays in the upcoming season include Bell, Book and Candle by John van Druten (Dec. 6-22), Fool For Love by Sam Shepard (March 7-22), and The Memory of Water by Shelagh Stephenson (May 9-25).

All performances will be at Muse Arts Warehouse.

From today’s press release:

Following an inaugural season of unparalleled quality and unprecedented success, The Collective Face Theatre Ensemble is thrilled to announce the four shows that will comprise the 2013-2014 season.

“I looked at what we had done this past year, what was very successful, and took that into account,” says Artistic Director David I.L. Poole. “I take suggestions from the audience and I take suggestions from the company members. Some of the more challenging plays for this season were chosen because audience members wanted us to do them.”

Renowned for dazzling dramatic interpretations of such classics as Angels in America, Suddenly Last Summer and Shadowlands, Savannahâ€s only repertory company also brought uproarious comedy (What the Butler Saw), a literary classic (Pride and Prejudice) and Biblical drama (Oscar Wildeâ€s Salome) to theater-goers during the 2012-2013 season.

According to Poole, the goal is to keep the bar as high as possible, to produce work that “challenges the audience. Then you take into account the people that you have in your company, and what roles would be very good for them. Weâ€re also into actor development, so I always look for roles that will stretch company members. Weâ€re growing as a company … and as a community as well.”

I don’t know anything about Bell, Book and Candle, a romantic comedy that was turned into a film with Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak back in the 1950s, but it sounds fun. Fool For Love is an American classic, and The Memory of Water, which tells the story of three sisters at their mother’s funeral, seems a great vehicle for the excellent actors in the ensemble.

Here are the ensemble’s current members:

The Venus Flytrap is center stage.

The outer world is just a reflection of the dark passions of the characters’ psyches — and of the playwright’s.

Those unfamiliar with Suddenly Last Summer will find plenty of the usual Tennessee Williams themes: repressed — or at least hidden — homosexuality; naked greed; the fading of some illusion of Southern charm into sordid desires and declining fortunes; a looming threat of incest; both praise and mockery of the poetic impulse.

The true main character in this play never makes it onstage: the wealthy, aging, pretentious, tortured, and promiscuous Sebastian Venable died last summer, and now his mother Violet has set out to have his cousin Catherine lobotomized to stop her from telling the mad but true story of his death. Dandy Barrett and Maggie Lee Hart are excellent as mother and cousin, respectively, both of whom have an emptiness at their cores that they tried to fill up with Sebastian.

Under David Poole’s direction, the rest of the cast is excellent too — David Bonham as Catherine’s brother George, Mickey Dodge as Catherine’s mother, Julie Kessler as the severe nun who has accompanied Catherine from a private mental hospital, and Lynita Spivey as Violet’s cowed assistant.

But the play depends on the tensions between the four main characters — Catherine, Violet, Dr. Cukrowicz, and the missing Sebastien. In just over 80 minutes (no intermission), the production gathers force before the cathartic — if perhaps overly quick — climax.

Please note that there are just two more productions next weekend — October 19th and 20th (plus an 8 p.m. show on Sunday the 14th).

And here for the heck of it is the amazing trailer from the film version, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, and Montgomery Clift:

And a photo of the set embedded from Facebook. I sat in the front row just in front of that small metal table — a spot I’d highly recommend.