HITTING THE BOARDS Hilary Maiberger as Belle and Darick Pead as Beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Amy Boyle Photo
SHOW STOPPERS
The big news at The Redhouse (201 S. West St.; 425-0405) is the move. Laura Austin and Stephen Svoboda, famed multi-taskers, will keep the Armory Square main stage at the corner of West and Fayette streets jumping all year, as they prepare to become Redhouse at City Center in the former Sibley’s department store space on South Salina Street. The season opens with The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Sept. 1127), with kids facing occasional ecstasy and frequent agony in competition. Svoboda’s original work, The Penguin Tango (Oct. 23-Nov. 1), follows, with no other details available at press time. The family musical for the holidays will be Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray’s adaptation of director Steven Spielberg’s film The Color Purple (Dec. 4-20). The cast will include children from the Hillside Family of Agencies. Come winter Svoboda will juggle three balls in the air at once, all dealing with the incomparable wit Oscar Wilde. One is Wilde’s masterpiece farce, The Importance of Being Earnest. Second is Moises Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, based on actual court transcripts. Third is Terrence McNally’s musical adaptation of an Irish film about a bus driver obsessed with Oscar Wilde, A Man of No Importance, with music and lyrics by William Finn and Lynn Ahrens. All will be packed into the days between Jan. 21 and Feb. 8. Then it’s on to Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound (March 19-28), the second of the playwright’s semiautobiographical trilogy. The last production before the move will be Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Carousel (April 30-May 9), one of the darkest of all golden-age musicals. Soprano Caitlyn Oenbrink will be featured as millworker Julie Jordan. Garrett Heater and Susan Blumer’s Covey Theatre Company (420-3729) performs at the BeVard Room of the Mulroy Civic Center. Their opener, Lincoln’s Blood (Oct. 31-Nov. 8), stars Kate Huddleston as Mary Todd Lincoln in Heater’s fourth original stage work, charting the fallout from the president’s assassination. The show features Darian Sundberg and Maya Dwyer as the Rathbones, who shared Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theater. Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage (April-May), a Tony Award winner from the author of Art, stars Moe Harrington, Aubry Ludington Panek, Wil Szczech and Louis Balestra as the people who tear each other apart for the good of their children. And the Age of Aquarius returns with Galt MacDermot’s ultimate 1960s musical Hair! (July-August). Artistic director C.J. Young at Apple-
seed Productions (performances at the Atonement Lutheran Church’s Fellowship Hall, 116 W. Glen Ave.; 492-9766) continues the company policy of allowing directors to strike out in new areas each time. Young directs Laura Eason’s musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Sept. 5-20), a spirited yet faithful adaptation of the Mark Twain classic. Expect choreography by Jimmy Curtin, with performances from Eian Prinsen in the title role and Hunter Siegel-Cook as his pal Huck. Lois Haas directs Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s original adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank (Oct. 17-Nov. 1), one of the 20th century’s most enduring stories of martyrdom. Winter months will bring two historical dramas in repertory, in collaboration with the Onondaga Historical Association. Thomas Cullinan’s Mrs. Lincoln (Feb. 15-March 1) depicts the president’s widow 10 years after the assassination when she is declared insane and confined to an Illinois sanitarium. Sharee Lemos directs. Justin Polly will appear in the one-man show RFK (Feb. 15-March 1), directed by C.J. Young on the life of Robert Kennedy. And Paula Kelley will direct Ken Ludwig’s 1930s-style screwball comedy, Moon Over Buffalo (May 1-16), about backstage shenanigans during a touring production of Cyrano de Bergerac. Dustin Czarny’s company Central New York Playhouse (Shoppingtown mall; 885-8960) has a 4,500-square-foot theater with plenty of room to try anything, large or small. The season begins with the area premiere of The Guys (Friday, Aug. 29-Sept. 11), a two-person drama starring Nathan Faudree and JoAnne Rougeux, about a New City York fireman and an editor dealing with the trauma of the 9/11 attacks. Then Justin Polly will direct The Laramie Project (Sept. 12-27), about the effects on a small city of the execution of gay student Matthew Shepherd. A second area premiere will be Evil Dead: The Musical (Oct. 17-Nov. 1), based on the 1980s movies by Sam Raimi. Dan Rowlands directs, with music handled by Abel Searor. In conjunction with Salt City Center for the Performing Arts, Czarny’s troupe will present John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt (Nov. 7-15), about moral ambiguity in a parochial school; Dan Stevens directs his wife Nora O’Dea as the mother superior. Next comes Joleene DesRosiers Moody’s Visiting Bammy Lewis (Dec. 12-20), with Kathy Egloff in the title role. Korrie Taylor directs this world premiere written by Moody, a local actress, author and motivational speaker. The new year begins with laughter as Czarny will direct Ken Ludwig’s 1930s-style comedy Lend Me a Tenor
syracusenewtimes.com | 08.27.14 - 09.02.14
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