by Mark G. Auerbach
Liz McCartney in The Importance of Being Earnest in Storrs.
Liz McCartney Headlines The Importance of Being Earnest in Storrs
The Importance of Bring Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s trivial comedy for serious people, opens the Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s season with performances.October 5-15 at the Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre on the UConn Storrs campus. Jean Randich directs the farcical comedy which first opened in 1895 in London. The Importance of Being Earnest has been revived many times over the years, made into movie and TV adaptations, turned into an Off-Broadway musical, Ernest in Love, two operas, and recorded.
The play follows the double lives of Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, men who invent circumstances that give them excuses to escape the strictures of family, duty, and social responsibility. But once you begin lying, how do you know when to stop? As each man’s romantic interest becomes entangled in the web of fantasies and deceits, Wilde’s characters find themselves in a dizzying world in which “the truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Liz McCartney of Broadway’s Phantom of The Opera, Mamma Mia!, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Sunday in the Park With George, plays Lady Bracknell.
The Saturday, October 14 matinee will be ASL Interpreted. For details: 860-486-2113 or https://crt.uconn.edu
Carolyn Kuan
Of Note…
Carolyn Kuan, Music Director of The Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and 10 other Connecticut residents will take the oath to become U.S. citizens at a naturalization ceremony, to be held at The Bushnell’s Belding Theatre on October 7, before Kuan leads the orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. Maestra Kuan, a native of Taiwan, came to the USA at age 14 to study at Northfield Mount Hermon School, and later graduated from Smith College. She continued her music studies at University of Illinois and Peabody Conservatory.
The Symphony Seasons Begin
Pianist Claire Huangci performs on the Springfield Symphony season opener.
The Springfield Symphony Orchestra opens its 74th season on October 14 at Springfield Symphony Hall. Maestro Kevin Rhodes leads the orchestra in Rossini’s Overture to La Gazza Ladra, Prokofiev’s Paino Concerto No. 2, and Brahms Symphony No. 2. Pianist Claire Huangci,returns to Springfield Symphony as guest soloist. She previously performed the Grieg Piano Concerto with the SSO in 2016. She and Maestro Rhodes will perform together with the Traverse Symphony in Michigan later this season. Before the concert, there’s a Gala reception. The proceeds benefit the programs and services of the Springfield Symphony. If you want to attend that, the RSVP deadline is Friday. Tickets for the concert will be available through curtain time. For details: 413-733-2291 or www.springfieldsynphony.org.
The Pioneer Valley Symphony, which performs at Greenfield High School launches its season the same day, October 14, with another thrilling pianist, Sara Davis Buechner, who thrilled Springfield Symphony audiences two seasons ago, performing Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety. Buechner will perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 on a program that includes: the world premiere of William Perry’s Pioneer Valley: The First Frontier, and Ravel’s Bolero. Buechner is a tour-de-force artist, and she’s quite open about the difficulty journey she made transitioning from David Buechner to Sara Davis Burchner, a story the New York Times chronicled in a video, Longtime PVSO conductor Paul Philliips conducts. This is his last concert with the PVSO, since he’s left to take another position. The Pioneer Valley Symphony is doing a conductor’s search this season. For concert details: https://www.pvsoc.org/ For the New York Times video about Sara Davis Buechner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0BR-54xzkE
Pianist Sara Davis Buechner performs on the Pioneer Valley Symphony season opener.
Broadway on Television
You may be able to see some Broadway hits on TV, thanks to PBS, which is bringing several Broadway hits to the airwaves this fall.
A series, Broadway’s Best, airs on Friday nights, beginning October 20 and running through December 1 at 9PM. She Loves Me, the Harnick and Bock musical set in a Budapest parfumerie, kicks off the series. Laura Benanti, Jane Krakowski, and Gavil Creel star in the musical with a score by the Fiorello and Fiddler on The Roof composers. Noel Coward’s Present Laughter with Tony Award winner Kevin Kline airs November 3. In The Heights, the documentary of the Tony Award winning musical by Lin Manuel Miranda, creator of Broadway’s Hamilton, will be broadcast on November 10. Indecent, this season’s acclaimed hit by Paula Vogel, will be broadcast on November 17. Holiday Inn, the Goodspeed musical hit that charmed Broadway with its Irving Berlin score and Denis Jones choreography, airs November 24. The documentary Hamilton’s America, a backstage look at Broadway’s super hit, will be aired on December 1.
Goodspeed’s Holiday Inn. “Shaking The Blues Away”. Photo by Diane Sobolewski.
PBS’ Live from Lincoln Center will air the Tony Award winning Falsettos on October 27. Created by James Lapine and William Finn, as three separate one-acts with the same characters, was first turned into a complete musical at Hartford Stage in 1991. It was a hit on Broadway the following season, and revived this past season. Check PBS local stations for air times.
Keep in Mind…
ArtsBeat Radio talks with Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s Matthew J. Pugliese, who’s staging Jen Silverman’s new play That Poor Girl and How He Killed Her in Storrs. And we meet Steve Perry, the Principal Tuba player for both the Springfield and Hartford Symphony Orchestras. Wednesday, October 11 at 9AM. on 89.5FM/WSKB. Tune in live on the airwaves, on Comcast ch. 15, www.wskb.org or at www.westfieldtv.org
Albatross, Matthew Spangler and Benjamin Evett’s adaptation of one of the greatest poems ever written, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”, plays Northampton’s Academy of Music on October 14. Evett stars in the one-man show, originally produced by Poets Theatre in Boston. For details on the play: http://albatrosstheplay.net/ For performance information: 413-584-9032 ext.105 or www.aomtheatre.com
—
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. Mark produces and hosts ArtsBeat Radio on 89.5fm/WSKB.
