The director of our little troupe is a lover of musicals. Therefore, so are we. Below are synopses of each of our staged productions to date.
The Spitfire Grill is an American musical with music and book by James Valcq and lyrics and book by Fred Alley, based on the film by Lee David Zlotoff. The Off-Broadway production by Playwrights Horizons began previews at the Duke Theatre on 42nd Street on September 7, 2001 and concluded its scheduled run on October 14, 2001. It won the Richard Rodgers Production Award, administered by The American Academy of Arts and Letters. The musical depicts the journey of a young woman just released from prison who decides to start her life anew in a rural Wisconsin town. She precipitates a journey within the town itself toward its own tenuous reawakening.
The Fantasticks is a 1960 musical with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones. It tells an allegorical story, concerning two neighboring fathers who trick their children, Luisa and Matt, into falling in love by pretending to feud and erecting a wall between their houses. The fathers then hire traveling actors to stage a mock abduction, so that Matt can heroically seem to save Luisa, settling the supposed feud and securing their fathers' blessings (which the young lovers have really had all along). The show's original off-Broadway production ran a total of 42 years and 17,162 performances, making it the world's longest-running musical. It was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre in 1991.
Holly's Follies is a compendium of 100 years of Musical history, from Vaudeville to Broadway hits in the 1950s conceived and directed by Holly Haas. Our narrator (Jeff Favorite) hilariously guides us through a dazzling array of tunes with a stellar band and a little help from the Marx Brothers. This is our first annual revue with 22 actors, singers and dancers performing over 50 songs and scenes from Broadway Musicals.
Lucky Stiff was the first collaboration for the team of Lynn Ahrens (book and lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty (music). This murder mystery farce propels a mild-mannered English shoe clerk into a lunatic mix of murdered Atlantic City croupier, his near-sighted jilted mistress, her hen-pecked brother and several hundred (off-stage) dogs. Witherspoon will inherit six million dollars if he can successfully go on holiday with his uncle, the late departed croupier, in Monte Carlo for a week. If he doesn't pull it off, the money goes to the Universal Dogs Home of Brooklyn - and if there is one thing in life that Harry hates, it's dogs! With a tuneful score and a well-oiled plot, plus the ultimate happy ending, Lucky Stiff guarantees hilarity for one and all.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a one act musical comedy conceived by Rebecca Feldman with music and lyrics by William Finn, a book by Rachel Sheinkin and additional material by Jay Reiss. The show centers on a fictional spelling bee set in a geographically ambiguous Putnam Valley Middle School. Six quirky adolescents compete in the Bee, run by three equally-quirky grown-ups.
The 2005 Broadway production, directed by James Lapine and produced by David Stone, James L. Nederlander, Barbara Whitman, Patrick Catullo, Barrington Stage Company and Second Stage Theater, earned good reviews and box-office success and was nominated for six Tony Awards, winning two, including Best Book. The show has spawned various other productions in the U.S., including a national tour with performances in Canada, and Australian productions.
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