by Mark G. Auerbach
Scarlett Strallen
A Midsummer Night’s Dream Opens Hartford Stage Season
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Artistic Director Darko Tresnjak, opens Hartford Stage’s 2017-18 Season, September 7 through October 8,. Scarlett Strallen, Esau Pritchett, and John Lavelle lead the cast.
One of Shakespeare’s most popular works, A Midsummer Night’s Dream captivates with the intertwined stories of six bumbling actors; four lovestruck teenagers; one royal wedding; and the infinite magical realm of the fairies. Lust, folly, madness—and even true love—hide in the shimmering lights of the enchanted forest.
Tresnjak’s Hartford Stage credits include A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, which moved on to Broadway to win the Tony Award for Best Musical, and Anastasia, which is currently a hit on Broadway. Some other Tresnjak Hartford Stage hits include: Heartbreak House; The Comedy of Errors; Rear Window; Romeo & Juliet; and Hamlet. Other recent credits include The Ghosts of Versailles at LA Opera.
English stage actress Scarlett Strallen will play Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and Titania, the Fairy Queen. Strallen, a two-time Olivier Award nominee, assumed the role of Sibella in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder on Broadway in 2015. In 2013, she played Cassie in the West End revival of A Chorus Line. Strallen also starred in Barrington Stage’s production of The Pirates of Penzance opposite Will Swenson.
Theseus, the Duke of Athens, and Oberon, the Fairy King, will be played by stage actor Esau Pritchett, who starred as Mark Antony in the McCarter Theatre Center’s production of Antony & Cleopatra. He has also appeared in A Free Man of Color on Broadway, and TV’s Orange is the New Black.
John Lavelle will portray Nick Bottom, the hapless weaver. Lavelle played journalist Roy Reed in the 2014 Academy Award-nominated film Selma. He also played Benjamin opposite Lorraine Bracco in John Reid’s 2002 Broadway adaptation of The Graduate. He has done voice work for the hit animated films Zootopia and Frozen and, most recently, for the scripted audio drama Bronzeville.
The creative team includes: Set Designer Alexander Dodge (Anastasia and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder at Hartford Stage and on Broadway); Costume Designer Joshua Pearson (Private Lives and La Dispute at Hartford Stage); and Lighting Designer York Kennedy (August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and Rear Window at Hartford Stage).
For details: www.hartfordstage.org
Rorianne Schrade of Sevenars heads to Carnegie Hall
Road Trips
New York: Sevenars’ Rorianne Schrade Performs at Canregie Hall
Sevenars Concert Series’ spokesperson Rorianne Schrade put her performing career as a concert pianist on hold five years ago to care for her parents and to take care of personal business and the family business–the Sevenars Concert Series, which has brought the sound of music to Worthington, MA every summer for fifty years.
But, Schrade returns to the concert arena, Carnegie Hall, in fact, on September 19, when under the auspices of Impromptu Classics, she performs in recital in the intimate Weill Recital Hall. She gave Sevenars audiences a preview of her recital program earlier this month. Among the nine pieces of music, she’ll perform works by Mozart, Glazunov, Rachmaninoff, and Pärt.
For details: www.carnegiehall.org.
Kevin Rhodes, Springfield Symphony Maestro. Photo by John Robert Williams.
Boston: Kevin Rhodes Conducts Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra’s 40th Anniversary Season Opener
Boston’s Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra launches its 40th Anniversary Season with a concert led by its Principal Conductor, Maestro Kevin Rhodes, on September 23 at First Baptist Church in Newton Centre. Rhodes, who is also Music Director of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra and Michigan’s Traverse Symphony, leads the orchestra in a performance of works including a world premiere by Boston composer Thomas Oboe Lee; Joseph Schwantner’s stirring New Morning for the World “Daybreak of Freedom” was composed in 1982 as a majestic musical frame for the noble words of Martin Luther King, Jr–a work performed previously by the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, and Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony.
This concert kicks off a busy season for Rhodes. In addition to concert seasons in Springfield, Boston, and Michigan, he returns to Stuttgart and Vienna. For details on the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra: http://www.proarte.org/
Nicole Haslett
Keep in Mind…
Arts Beat Radio welcomes Springfield Symphony Orchestra Maestroi Kevin Rhodes on Friday, August 25 from 8AM-9AM. live from The Press Room in Westfield, MA, on 89.5FM/WSKB. C’mon down, caffeinate, and watch live radio; or tune in live on the airwaves, on Comcast ch. 15, www.wskb.org or at www.westfieldtv.org
Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss’ opera, a comic “backstage at the opera” opera about a wealthy patron who commissions two pieces of music will be presented by the Berkshire Opera Festival at Pittsfield’s Colonial Theatre on August 26, 29, and September 1. Jonathon Loy directs, Brian Garman conducts, and the cast
Jeff McCarthy
includes Marcy Stonikas as The Prima Donna, Nicole Haslett as Zerbinetta, and Kevin Ray as the Tenor. For details: https://www.berkshireoperafestival.org/
Kunstler. Jeff McCarthy stars as civil rights pioneer and attorney William Kunstler, in a return engagement of Jeffrey Sweet’s play at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield, September 13-24. The colorful, perpetually rumpled defense lawyer whose best-known clients include the Chicago Seven,and inmates involved in the Attica prison riots, makes a case for his often unconventional style, in this wise and revealing play, which costars Erin Roché. For details: 413-236-8888 or www.barringtonstageco.org
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Mark G. Auerbach studied theatre at American University and the Yale School of Drama. He’s worked for arts organizations and reported on theatre for newspapers and radio.
