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Long Wharf Begins Search For New Artistic Director; Critics Circle Honors Michael O’Flaherty

Goodspeed Musicals' musical director Michael O'Flaherty has been named receipient of the  2018 Tom Killen Award.
Courant file photo
Goodspeed Musicals’ musical director Michael O’Flaherty has been named receipient of the 2018 Tom Killen Award.
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Long Wharf Theatre has actively begun its search for a new artistic director. It was announced May 7 that Arts Consulting Group — a national firm that declares itself to be “the leading provider of hands-on interim management, executive search, revenue enhancement, facilities and program planning, and organizational development services for the arts and culture industry” — has been chosen to conduct the search. ACG was selected from among eight firms considered by the Long Wharf’s own search committee, which formed following the abrupt dismissal of longtime artistic director Gordon Edelstein in January. Before forming the search committee, Long Wharf created a transition committee consisting of theater trustees and staff members. According to a press release issued about the search, the transition committee has “made several recommendations, including that the next artistic director be collaborative in tone and nature and should live in or around greater New Haven.”

The Long Wharf Theatre has had four artistic directors in its 53-year history. The search for the fifth has begun.
The Long Wharf Theatre has had four artistic directors in its 53-year history. The search for the fifth has begun.

Critics Circle Honors

Goodspeed’s Michael O’Flaherty

Connecticut Critics Circle will bestow its 2018 Tom Killen Award upon Goodspeed Musicals’ long-serving musical director Michael O’Flaherty at the group’s awards ceremony June 11 at Westport Country Playhouse.

O’Flaherty has conducted shows at Goodspeed — not with a baton, but while playing keyboards in the pit band — since the early 1990s. He also wrote the music and lyrics for “A Connecticut Christmas Carol,” which premiered at the Goodspeed’s Norma Terris Theatre last year and which is returning for a second holiday season this fall. Some of his Goodspeed work has brought him to Broadway: as the musical arranger and conductor for “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and the conductor for “By Jeeves.”

O’Flaherty was Musical Supervisor and Cabaret Director at the Williamstown Theatre Festival for 11 years, and has also worked at Paper Mill Playhouse, North Shore Music Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Smithsonian, The Kennedy Center and elsewhere. He’s overseen concert collaborations between the Goodspeed and Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

The Connecticut Critics Circle has been active since 1990. Tom Killen, a theater columnist for the New Haven Register who died in 1989, was one of its original organizers. Details at ctcritics.org

Goodspeed Musicals' musical director Michael O'Flaherty has been named receipient of the  2018 Tom Killen Award.
Goodspeed Musicals’ musical director Michael O’Flaherty has been named receipient of the 2018 Tom Killen Award.

First-Name Basis

Not only has TheaterWorks Producing Artistic Director Rob Ruggiero just put together the 2018-19 TheaterWorks season (half of which will be staged at a yet-to-be-disclosed “alternate space,” since the theater’s Pearl Street home will be under renovations), he’s also directing three musicals around the country this summer.

The common bond is “musical with people’s first names as their titles.” Ruggiero is directing “Oliver!” at the Goodspeed Opera House June 29 through Sept. 8. Then comes “Gypsy,” July 27 through Aug. 2 as part of the centennial season at The Muny, the vast outdoor ampitheatre in St. Louis, Mo. Ruggiero will stay in Missouri to do “Evita” at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis Sept. 5 to 30.

In the fall, Ruggiero will be back in Hartford, helming a show that does not happen to feature a name in its title, TheaterWorks’ season-opener “The River” by Jez Butterworth.

The most recent musical Rob Ruggiero directed in Connecticut was “Rags” at the Goodspeed Opera House last year.

Chalfant Honored

On May 21, the great actress Kathleen Chalfant will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement award from the Obies, those longtime arbiters of theatrical excellence off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway.

Chalfant has also made lasting contributions to theater here in Connecticut. Among her memorable roles: Lidiya Ivanova in “The Paper Gramophone” at Hartford Stage in 1989; Mrs. Alving in Ibsen’s “Ghosts” at Hartford Stage in 1996; Professor Vivian Bearing in “Wit” at Long Wharf Theatre in 1997 (the legendary production that led Margaret Edson’s play to receive a Pulitzer Prize). Chalfant also ruled as the Countess of Roussillon in the Yale Rep productions of “All’s Well That Ends Well” (2006), as Ronald Reagan and Adolf Hitler and Queen Elizabeth I in Sarah Ruhl’s “Passion Play” (2008); and, just last year, as Ruthie and Tenkei in the Amy Herzog motherhood drama “Mary Jane.”

Kathleen Chalfant as Queen Elizabeth I in “Passion Play” at Yale Rep in 2008.

Theater Reading

The second chapter of CNN host Jake Tapper’s fun new political thriller “The Hellfire Club” takes place on Jan. 14, 1954, at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. The theater lobby is swarming with politicians, including Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Estes Kefauver, Joe McCarthy, Herbert Hoover and the fictional hero of the novel, a young congressman named Charlie Marder.

Tapper writes:

Charlie turned his attention to the colorful lobby poster for the show preview they were about to see, “The Pajama Game,” which was set to debut on Broadway in the spring.

“What’s it about anyway? I mean, besides being about 90 minutes too long.” Charlie was not a fan of musicals.

“It’s about strikes,” said Margaret.

“Baseball? Bowling?” He enjoyed playing clueless sidekick to Margaret’s straight man.

“Unions, dear.”

“Of course,” said Charlie. “Who wouldn’t look at sweaty longshoremen in Hoboken, New Jersey, and say ‘You know what? I’d love to see them sing and dance.'”

A lot of the action in “The Hellfire Club,” including Senator Kefauver’s attempt to expose comic books as a prime cause of juvenile delinquency, really did happen in Washington in 1954. But “The Pajama Game” did not play Arena Stage in January of that year. The attraction that month was Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness!” Arena Stage wasn’t even doing musicals back then. “The Pajama Game” did play Arena Stage, though — in 2017.

Where did the original “The Pajama Game” have its out-of-town tryout? At the Shubert in New Haven in April of 1954.

The most recent major production of “The Pajama Game” was at the Goodspeed Opera House in 1998.

Sister Circuses

You’ve heard of sister cities. Well, the Circophony circus training program at the Oddfellows Playhouse in Middletown has a sister circus in East Africa: Hiccup Circus Uganda, which helps and performs for young people in refugee camps and impoverished areas of Kampala.

On May 19 at 7 p.m. in the playhouse, Circophony is presenting a new 45-minute circus theater piece created by Allison McDermott as a benefit for Hiccup Circus. “Artstagram,” performed by McDermott and Rob Grimm, is about “art in the age of Instagram.” The performers “navigate the algorithms of Instagram on their quest to reach 100,000 followers.”

Besides “Artstagram,” the evening will feature two short circus acts created in Circophony’s “Student-Directed Circus” program: “Disappearing Act” by Carolyn Reid and “Stereotypical Society” by Jasmine Peck. All proceeds will go to Hiccup Circus. Tickets are $8, $5 for children. The playhouse is at 128 Washington St. in Middletown. Details at oddfellows.org.

Allison McDermott and Rob Grimm in “Artstagram,” being performed May 19 in Middletown as a benefit for Hiccup Circus Uganda.

Connecticut Cyranos

With Peter Dinklage announced as the star of the new musical “Cyrano” (with Haley Bennett as Roxanne), let’s look at some of the other famous actors who played Cyrano de Bergerac in Connecticut over the years.

Walter Hampden, a major Broadway star in the first half of the 20th century, played Cyrano in Edmond Rostand’s original play at both Hartford’s Parsons Theatre and New Haven’s Shubert in 1932 and 1936. Allan Jones (a few years before co-starring with the Marx Brothers in “A Night at the Opera” and “A Day at the Races”) starred in a musical adaptation, “Roxanne,” at the Shubert, also in 1932. One of the most famous Cyranos in history, Jose Ferrer, played the Shubert in 1946. Anthony Zerbe starred in Rostand’s play at the Long Wharf Theatre in 1980.

The musical “Cyrano, adapted and directed by Erica Schmidt with a score by members of the rock band The National, is at the Goodspeed’s Norma Terris Theater in Chester Aug. 3 through Sept. 2. Single tickets will go sale May 21. Details at goodspeed.org.

Anthony Zerbe as Cyrano de Bergerac at Long Wharf Theatre in 1980.
Anthony Zerbe as Cyrano de Bergerac at Long Wharf Theatre in 1980.