‘Cyrano’ Musical At Goodspeed; 3 Musicals For CT Rep’s Nutmeg Series

Goodspeed’s 2018 Norma Terris Season

The National has a big nose.

The acclaimed Brooklyn alt-rock band is involved with a new musical adaptation of the Edmund Rostand classic “Cyrano de Bergerac.” The show will premiere Aug. 3 through Sept. 2 at Goodspeed Musicals’ Norma Terris Theatre in Chester. “Cyrano” will be directed by Erica Schmidt, who also wrote the show’s book.

“Cyrano de Bergerac,” about a nasally challenged soldier who helps a more handsome man woo the woman he loves, has been turned into musicals numerous times, including in the 1970s (with a book by Anthony Burgess), in the 1990s (a Dutch version that made it to Broadway) and in the ’00s (by Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse). This new one is described by the Goodspeed as “timeless and unconventional.”

The twin brothers who play guitar and keyboards in The National, Aaron and Bryce Dessner, are composing the music, while the band’s vocalist Matt Berninger is co-writing the lyrics with his wife and frequent collaborator Carin Besser. (The National’s rhythm section does not appear to be involved on the writing side).

The National has played in Connecticut many times, and has made records with Connecticut-based producer/engineers Peter Katis (of Bridgeport’s Tarquin Studios) and Nick Lloyd (of New Haven’s Firehouse 12). The band is currently on an international tour, playing Australia, New Zealand and South America in the next few weeks.

The rest of the three-show Norma Terris 2018 season consists of:

* “You Are Here,” with music and lyrics by Neil Bartram and book by Brian Hill. The Goodspeed describes the show, which runs Aug. 3 through Sept. 2, as an “intimate, hilarious and heart-breaking tour-de-force musical” about “Diana, a Chicago housewife” who “walks out of her comfortable suburban life” and is “suddenly alone in a fast-changing world.” Bartram and Hill’s “The Story of My Life” was produced at the Norma Terris Theatre in 2008, and their “The Theory of Relativity” was read at Goodspeed’s Festival of New Musicals in 2014. “You Are Here” was first produced at the 1000 Islands Playhouse in Toronto in 2016.

* The return of “A Connecticut Christmas Carol” by LJ Fecho and Michael O’Flaherty. The Goodspeed’s attempt to create a seasonal theatergoing tradition (a la Hartford Stage’s “A Christmas Carol — A Ghost Story of Christmas”) brings to life (or to a ghost-like presence) such historic Connecticut names as William Gillette, Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Again directed by Hunter Foster, it’s at the Norma Terris Nov. 30 through Dec. 30. “A Connecticut Christmas Carol” may one year move over to the larger Goodspeed Opera House space, where the show is in fact set.

Details at goodspeed.org.

R.I.P. Reg E. Cathey

Reg E. Cathey, who died this week at the age of 59, is justly remembered for his TV roles of political consultant Norman Wilson in “The Wire,” Unit Manager Martin Querns in “Oz” and ribs chef Freddy Hayes in “House of Cards” — seemingly minor roles that he was able to transform into important, attention-getting characters. In superhero movie circles Cathey is acknowledged as the only good thing in the 2015 “Fantastic Four” movie, playing Dr. Franklin Storm.

But before and after all that, Reg E. Cathey was a stage actor, and a damn good one.

Cathey’s professional acting career began and ended in New Haven, encompassing a wide range of styles and performances over the space of three decades.

He attended the Yale School of Drama, appearing on the Yale Rep stage in the 1981 Winterfest production of OyamO’s “The Resurrection of Lady Lester.” A decade later, he was in two of the three Winterfest offerings of 1992: as one of the suitcase-toting citizens in Travis Preston and Colette Brooks’ experimental remix of DeTocqueville’s “Democracy in America” and as Ham in the equally busy ensemble drama “The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World” by Suzan-Lori Parks. “Death of the Last Black Man” was directed by Liz Diamond, who would bring Cathey back to the Rep to play the prissy Percival Hack in a lavish production of Charles Ludlam’s “Le Bourgeois Avant-Garde” featuring a cast of off-off-Broadway all-stars in 1995, then to star in “The Cure at Troy,” Seamus Heaney’s adaptation of Sophocles’ “Philoctetes” in 1998.

A year ago, Cathey was in New Haven playing Clov in Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame” at the Long Wharf Theatre. My review of the show began: “Reg E. Cathey finds invigorating rhythms in slamming doors, sweeping gestures, ascending a stepladder and folding stained linens.”

I had the pleasure of meeting Cathey several times. Many of his stage and screen roles made him seem gruff and somber, but when I interviewed him he was laughing and cracking jokes.

When he was doing “The Cure at Troy,” he’d just made the conscious choice to return to New York and a stage-acting career after giving Hollywood a try. When I interviewed him last year at an “Endgame” rehearsal, he said he’d never regretted that choice. On behalf of Connecticut theatergoers, I thanked him.

Beekman Leaves NTD

Betty Beekman, who’s been with the National Theatre of the Deaf for three and a half decades, and served as its Executive Director for the past six years, is leaving the organization effective Feb. 16.

The NTD, which won a Tony Award for Theatrical Excellence in 1977, has concentrated on family-friendly touring productions under Beekman’s watch. Earier in the theater’s 50-year history, it was known for adaptations of works by Dylan Thomas, Gertrude Stein, Ibsen, Moliere and ancient myths. The theater was founded in the mid-1960s, inspired in part by the Broadway success of the Helen Keller biodrama “The Miracle Worker.” The National Theatre of the Deaf is affiliated with the O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford and the American School of the Deaf in West Hartford.

2018 Nutmeg Series

CT Rep’s Nutmeg Summer Series is all singing, all dancing this summer. The 2018 season has just been announced, and all three events are musicals — no plays or plays-with-music. And Broadway names are involved.

First up is “Disaster!,” June 7-16. The satirical 1970s-set show’s co-writer Seth Rudetsky will be recreating the role of Prof. Ted Scheider he played when “Disaster!” was on Broadway in 2016. You might also recognize Seth Rudetsky as the playbill.com diarist and Sirius/XM “Big Fat Broadway” host who brought one of his “Concert for America” charity events to The Bushnell this past August. Also aboard CT Rep’s “Disaster!” from the Broadway production: director Jack Plotnick.

“Sweeney Todd: A Musical Thriller in Concert,” June 21 through July 1, is Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s penny-dreadful musical staged concert-style, similar to how CT Rep managed to do “Les Miserables” in 2015. Nutmeg Series Artistic Director Terrence Mann (who was in the original Broadway casts of “Cats,” “Les Mis” and “Beauty and the Beast”) will star as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The summer season closes with a story set in springtime, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s hallowed rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Terrence Mann will direct, and Christopher d’Amboise (who directed “Newsies” at CT Rep last season) will choreograph. Hosanna hey-sanna!

Subscription packages are already available. Single tickets will go on sale March 1. Details at crt.uconn.edu.

‘Love Letters’

For its spring fundraising gala April 12, Westport Country Playhouse will be staging a performance of “Love Letters” starring Kelli O’Hara (the Broadway star who won a Tony for “The King & I” revival in 2015) and noted Trump impersonator Alec Baldwin.

The one-night event honors “Love Letters”‘ playwright and longtime Roxbury resident A.R. Gurney, who died in June at the age of 86. There have been more than 20 productions of Gurney’s plays at Westport Playhouse over the years, most recently the premiere of “Love and Money” in 2014.

“Love Letters” is a love story told through the lifelong correspondence between two wealthy New Englanders. The play was written so it can be read directly from the page, with a minimal set design and little or no rehearsal time. It is often performed by celebrities. In 2015, “Love Letters” was seen at The Bushnell starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw and at Long Wharf Theatre starring Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy.

This month, two other Connecticut theaters have been doing “Love Letters”: MTC in Norwalk used three separate celebrity couples in a run that ended Feb. 11, and the Katharine Hepburn Theater is staging it with “Leave It to Beaver”‘s Tony Dow and his wife Lauren Feb. 18 at 2 and 7 pm.

Tickets to Westport’s April reading are $250 — this is a fundraising gala, remember. Details at westportplayhouse.org.