Trumbull-born comedian Lisa Lampanelli has written a play, and it’s getting a reading March 19 at Westport Country Playhouse as a benefit for The Center for Family Justice.
“Fat Girls, Interrupted” — a multi-character revision of a one-woman-show the comic has performed in New York — will be read by Lampanelli, Lisa Howard, Patricia Kalember and Jessica Luck. Kalember has done several readings in WCP’s own “Script in Hand” series. Howard was in “Emmett Otter” at Goodspeed and on Broadway in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” Luck has a rock band, My Dear Mycroft, and an improv troupe, The Jessicas.
Lampanelli, known as “The Queen of Mean,” has been doing stand-up for a quarter-century. She says “Fat Girls, Interrupted,” which apparently is the first of a series of plays she’s writing on women’s issues, “will do for weight and food issues what ‘The Vagina Monologues’ did for women’s nether-regions.” It is not to be mistaken for “Born Fat,” Jacques Lamarre’s show about Waterbury weight-loss guru Elizabeth Petruccione that played at Seven Angels Theatre last month.
What Players Are They?
The cast for “I Hate Hamlet,” which runs Feb. 24 to March 13 at Playhouse on Park in West Hartford, has been announced: Dan Whelton as Andrew, Ezra Barnes as John Barrymore, Susan Slotoroff as Deirdre, Julia Hochner as Felicia, David Lanson as Gary, and Ruth Neaveill as Lillian.
Slotoroff and Barnes were both in the Playhouse on Park production of A.R. Gurney’s “The Dining Room.” Whelton was seen at TheaterWorks in Richard Greenberg’s “Take Me Out.” The Paul Rudnick comedy, about a young actor who shares a New York apartment with the demented ghost of John Barrymore, is directed by Vince Tycer, who’s directed over a dozen shows in London and is currently a visiting artist in residence at UConn.
Deadpool — The Musical
Marvel Comics’ costumed mercenary character Deadpool made his debut 25 years ago. A movie starring Ryan Reynolds as the “regeneratin’ degenerate” was released Feb. 12. Hartford-born actor Will Friedle voiced Deadpool in the “Ultimate Spider-Man” TV cartoon series.
Theatergoers might best appreciate the new one-shot comic book “Deadpool the Musical!,” in which “the merc with a mouth” sings and dances while shooting opponents in the head. The song parodies are based on rock songs such as “O.P.P.” and “… Baby One More Time” rather than traditional show tunes, but the action takes place at a proscenium theater, the villains are wearing commedia dell’arte half-masks, and there are lots of costume changes.
Deadpool is asked (in song) “Tell me why you’re wearing women’s clothes…?” by no less a co-star than Spider-Man, veteran of his own misshapen Broadway musical.
Poison Pen
Playwright Joseph Kesserling reportedly based his murderous comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace” on a real-life, little-old-lady serial killer, Amy Archer-Gilligan, who ran a boarding house in Windsor. With this in mind, the Flock troupe is performing the play through Feb. 28 in the Shaw Mansion, site of the New London Historical Society.
The Courant was instrumental in bringing Archer-Gilligan to justice. Last year the state Supreme Court ruled that her psychiatric records should remain sealed, rebuffing a historian’s Freedom of Information request.
The Flock Theatre’s not the only company dispensing the ever-popular “Arsenic” this season: The Connecticut Theatre Company is doing it March 4 to 13 at the Repertory Theatre in New Britain. Last year, the play was done in Thomaston and Sherman. The most famous Connecticut production of the play (which was written in 1939, and is actually set in Brooklyn) was probably the one at the Long Wharf Theatre in 1995, with Joanne Woodward and Joyce Ebert as the poisonous Brewster sisters; Woodward’s husband Paul Newman made an opening-night cameo as one of the victims. Details on the Flock show at flocktheatre.org.
Two Parties, Now Conjoined in One
The Elm Shakespeare Company is formalizing its longtime partnership with Southern Connecticut State University. Elm Shakespeare has done outdoor productions in New Haven’s Edgerton Park for 20 years, for thousands of theatergoers each summer. Last year, founding Artistic Director James Andreassi retired from the company, passing the reins to new Producing Artistic Director Rebecca Goodheart.
For nearly its entire existence, Elm Shakespeare has been constructing sets and holding rehearsals at SCSU. The new agreement (currently in “Memorandum of Understanding” mode) will put Elm Shakespeare Company members “in residence” at the school: teaching Shakespeare workshops, guaranteeing several acting or tech positions in the summer shows to SCSU students and even directing school-year SCSU productions.
In turn, Southern will give Elm Shakespeare office space, classroom space and rehearsal space, plus free use of the scene shop and costume shop. The agreement will be signed at a public ceremony 4:30 p.m. March 2 in SCSU’s Lyman Center for the Performing Arts, at which Elm Shakespeare will also announce its 2016 season.
