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Lend Me A Tenor
Written by: Ken Ludwig
August 11-14 & 18-21, 2011
8:00 PM
Winner of 3 Tony Awards and 4 Drama Desk Awards, Lend Me A Tenor is set in September 1934. Saunders, the general manager of the Cleveland Grand Opera Company, is primed to welcome world famous, Tito Morelli, Il Stupendo, the greatest tenor of his generation, to appear for one night only as Otello. The star arrives late and, through a hilarious series of mishaps, is given a double dose of tranquilizers and passes out. His pulse is so low that Saunders and his assistant Max believe he’s dead. In a frantic attempt to salvage the evening, Saunders persuades Max to get into Morelli's Otello costume and fool the audience into thinking he's Il Stupendo. Max succeeds admirably, but Morelli comes to and gets into his other costume ready to perform. Now two Otellos are running around in costume and two women are running around in lingerie, each thinking she is with Il Stupendo. A sensation on Broadway and in London's West End, this madcap, screwball comedy is guaranteed to leave audiences teary-eyed with laughter. - Playbill. For more info on Ken Ludwig and his work visit kenludwig.com.
Rabbit Hole
Written by: David Lindsay-Abaire
September 15-18 & 22-25, 2011
8:00 PM
Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. "David Lindsay-Abaire has crafted a drama that's not just a departure but a revelation—an in-tensely emotional examination of grief, laced with wit, insightfulness, compassion and searing honesty." —Variety. "Grade: A! A transcendent and deeply affecting new play, which shifts perfectly from hilarity to grief." —Entertainment Weekly. "The highest praise to playwright David Lindsay-Abaire! RABBIT HOLE is an entertaining and satisfying play—it might just be the year's best." —Show Business Weekly. "A perceptive and poignant study in the day-to-day aches of bereavement: problems with personal intimacy, the uneasy friends who don't call, the emptiness in a house packed with reminders…Heartbreaking in its theme and details, RABBIT HOLE is a beautifully crafted work of great sensitivity." - Star-Ledger.
Nunsense
Book, music, and lyrics by Dan Goggin
October 20-23 & August 27-30, 2011
8:00 PM
Nunsense begins when the Little Sisters of Hoboken discover that their cook, Sister Julia, Child of God, has accidentally poisoned 52 of the sisters, and they are in dire need of funds for the burials. The sisters decide that the best way to raise the money is to put on a variety show, so they take over the school auditorium, which is currently set up for the eighth grade production of “Grease.” Here we meet Reverend Mother Regina, a former circus performer; Sister Mary Hubert, the Mistress of Novices; a streetwise nun from Brooklyn named Sister Robert Anne; Sister Mary Leo, a novice who is a wannabe ballerina; and the delightfully wacky Sister Mary Amnesia, the nun who lost her memory when a crucifix fell on her head. Featuring star turns,tap and ballet dancing, an audience quiz, and comic surprises, this show has become an international phenomenon. With more than 5000 productions worldwide, it has been translated into 21 languages. - © Copyright 2010-2015, Nunsense and ArtSite Design.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
Written by: Barbara Robinson
December 8-11 & 15-18, 2011
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PM
In this hilarious Christmas tale, a couple struggling to put on a church Christmas pageant is faced with casting the Herdman kids-- probably the most inventively awful kids in history. You won't believe the mayhem-- and the fun-- when the Herdmans collide with the Christmas story head on! - Samuel French
"An American classic."-- McCall's Magazine
"One of the best Christmas stories ever-- and certainly one of the funniest."-- The Seattle Times
This delightful comedy is adapted from the best selling book and the only story ever to run twice in McCall's Magazine.
Crowns
Written by: Regina Taylor, adapted from the book by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry
February 9-12 & 16-19, 2011
8:00 PM
A moving and celebratory musical play in which hats become a springboard for an exploration of black history and identity as seen through the eyes of a young black woman who has come down South to stay with her aunt after her brother is killed in Brooklyn. Hats are everywhere, in exquisite variety, and the characters use the hats to tell tales concerning everything from the etiquette of hats to their historical and contemporary social functioning. There is a hat for every occasion, from flirting to churchgoing to funerals to baptisms, and the tradition of hats is traced back to African rituals and slavery and forward to the New Testament and current fashion. Some rap but predominantly gospel music and dance underscore and support the narratives. The conclusion finds the standoffish young woman, whose cultural identity as a young black Brooklyn woman has been so at odds with the more traditional and older Southern blacks, embracing hats and their cultural significance as a part of her own fiercely independent identity. - Dramatists Play Service
Wiley and the Hairy Man
Written by: Cecily O'Neill & Suzan Zeder
March 22-25 & March 29 - April 1, 2012
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PM
Like Aesop's fables, Wiley and the Hairy Man is drawn from native folk wisdom. "Outwit the Hairy Man three times and he won't scare you ever again," says Mammy. Trembling, Wiley sets out for the woods, prepared to confront the Hairy Man; he looks fear in the face and outwits it. The adventures are presented in lyric poetry and mime. The actors become the woods, the cabin, and all the props, making Wiley imaginative and easy to mount. A Joseph Jefferson Award winner for outstanding children's play. - Dramatic Publishing
Dearly Departed
Written by: David Bottrell & Jessie Jones
May 17-20 & 24-27, 2012
8:00 PM
In the Baptist backwoods of the Bible Belt, the beleaguered Turpin family proves that living and dying in the South are seldom tidy and always hilarious. Despite their earnest efforts to pull themselves together for their father's funeral, the Turpin's other problems keep overshadowing the solemn occasion: Firstborn Ray-Bud drinks himself silly as the funeral bills mount; Junior, the younger son, is juggling financial ruin, a pack of no-neck monster kids, and a wife who suspects him of infidelity in the family car; their spinster sister, Delightful, copes with death as she does life, by devouring junk food; and all the neighbors add more than two cents. As the situation becomes fraught with mishap, Ray-Bud says to his long-suffering wife, "When I die, don't tell nobody. Just bury me in the backyard and tell everybody I left you." Amidst the chaos, the Turpins turn for comfort to their friends and neighbors, an eccentric community of misfits who just manage to pull together and help each other through their hours of need, and finally, the funeral. - Dramatists Play Service
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All Sunday matinees are at 3:00 PM.
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