MARK AUERBACH
Star Sightings
Some of Broadway’s biggest names are guest stars with area orchestras this summer, bringing some of Broadway’s biggest hits to showtune fans.
The Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s Talcott Mountain Music Festival brings three up-and-coming Broadway talents to Simsbury (July 11, with a raindate on July 12) in a program called “Broadway Rocks”. Randall Craig Fleischer conducts a program with excerpts from “The Wiz”, “Hairspray”, “The Lion King” “Jesus Christ Superstar”, Rent”, “Wicked” “Jersey Boys” and more. Morgan James, of Broadway’s recent “Godspell” and Barrington Stage’s “Guy and Dolls” joins Capathia Jenkins (who stopped the show in “Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me” and most recently in “Newsies”) and Rob Evan (from The Trans-Siberian Orchestra and “Jekyll and Hyde”) for an evening of Broadway’s best rock songs. For tickets: 860-244-2999 or www.hartfordsymphony.org.
Capathia Jenkins headlines the Talcott Mountain Music Festival
Meanwhile, the Boston Pops with Keith Lockhart conducting, hit Tanglewood on Sunday, July 13, and Jason Alexander, best known as George Constanza on “Seinfeld” is guest soloist. The Tony Award winner will perform elections from “Pippin” and “The Music Man” along with a few surprises.
Alexander’s depiction of George Costanza on “Seinfeld” earned him six Emmys, four Golden Globe nominations, an American Television Award and two American Comedy Awards. For his work on the long-running sitcom, the Screen Actors Guild knighted him “Best Actor in a Comedy Series,” while TV Guide readers voted him among the ten greatest television characters of all time.
Morgan James headlines the Talcott Mountain Music Festival.
Since his Broadway debut in “Merrily We Roll Along,” Alexander has starred on Broadway five times. Hired to write for “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway”, Alexander played 14 different characters, garnering a host of accolades, including a Tony Award. Alexander’s film credits include “Pretty Woman”; “Love, Valor, Compassion”; and “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle”. Alexander starred opposite Vanessa Williams in a TV production of “Bye Bye Birdie”. For tickets: 888-266-1200 or www.tanglewood.org.
Sharr White: Hot American Playwright
The young American playwright Sharr White is being noticed in theatres nationwide. Mary Louise Parker starred in his most recent Broadway play, “The Snow Geese” last season. “The Other Place”, White’s other Broadway hit, is getting accolades everywhere. Marg Helgenberger starred in the Barrington Stage production a few weeks ago. TheatreWorks in Hartford presented the play this Spring.
Jason Alexander joins the Boston Pops at Tanglewood.
Now comes “Annapurna”. Megan (“Will and Grace”) Mullally and husband Nick Offerman co-starred as the estranged lovers in the Off-Broadway production last month. The Chester Theatre Company brings “Annapurna” to the neighborhood from July 10-20. Westfield native Michelle Joyner stars with Daniel Riordan, and Robert Egan, Joyner’s off-stage husband, directs.
Chester Theatre Company Artistic Director Byam Stevens says, “Sharr White is a young American writer with a fast-rising international profile. In the past year he has had Broadway, Off Broadway, European and Australian productions. He has a unique and unmistakable gift for crackling dialogue that veers back and forth from the hilarious to the poetic. The result is a play with depth that is a fun ride.”
MIchelle Joyner
White’s play is set in the present. Twenty years ago, in the middle of the night, Emma (Michelle Joyner) walked out on Ulysses (Daniel Riordan), her cowboy-poet husband. Now, hearing he’s in dire straits, she tracks him down to a trailer park in the wilds of Colorado where she finds him hooked to an oxygen tank and cooking sausages in the buff. Their reunion, alternately comic and conflicted, is full of razor sharp wit and brutal honesty.
For tickets: 413-354-7770 or www.chestertheatre.org.
Keep in Mind…
***Benefactors, Michael Frayn’s award-winning drama, plays The Berkshire Theatre Group’s Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge through July 26. Eric Hill, former director of Springfield’s StageWest, directs. According to Hill, “Michael Frayn never seems to cover the same territory twice either in theme or dramatic form. Frayn’s best known theatrical works, “Noises Off” and “Copenhagen”, are wildly different, one being an hilarious farce and the other a drama about one of the most serious topics of modern history, the evolution of the atomic bomb in WWII “Benefactors” is a drama focusing on the lives of four middle age Londoner’s (David Adkins, Corinna May, Walton Wilson and Barbara Sims) searching for their role as meaningful contributors in a society in rapid flux in the late 1960’s.” For tickets: 413-298-5576 or www.berkshiretheatregroup.org.
***Julius Caesar, Shakespeare’s potent and bloody historical drama, has joined the repertory at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox through August 30. Tina Packer’s staging comes to Lenox after performance runs in Orlando and Prague. Seven actors play multiple roles in this poetry-filled psychological and political thriller. “Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar offers a remarkably accurate reflection of what actually occurred during the reign of Caesar,” says Packer. “He was a famous and highly regarded general, a terrific warrior and strategist, a writer and great thinker, who supported the common people. He changed the course of Roman history.” For tickets: 413-637-3353 or www.shakespeare.org.
***Very Good Eddie, Jerome Kern’s early 20th century vaudeville musical, gets a concert performance as part of The Berkshire Theatre Group’s free Monday afternoon Ellenoff Musical Theatre Series on July 14 at 2 p.m., at The Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. It’s general admission seating at the door. www.berkshiretheatregroup.org.
Eric Hill, director of Berkshire Theatre Group.
***The How and the Why, Sarah Treem’s compelling drama about science, family, and survival, plays Northampton’s New Century Theatre through July 12. Treem, writer and producer of TV shows “In Treatment” and “House of Cards”, fashioned a drama about two women, who meet for the first time. One is an ambitious young graduate student, and the other a well-respected Harvard professor. Both are brilliant evolutionary biologists. Their meeting on the eve of a national conference evolves into an intellectual, professional, and personal showdown. Sheila Siragusa directs. For tickets: 413-585-3220 or www.newenturytheatre.org
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.
