Mona Golabek Back At Hartford Stage
Concert pianist Mona Golabek will return to Hartford Stage for a special summer engagement of her one-woman grand-piano show “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” July 12-22. The show played Hartford Stage as part of the 2014-15 season. It has since been seen in Connecticut at Westport Country Playhouse in 2017 and 2018.
“The Pianist of Willesden Lane” is based on the experiences of Golabek’s mother Lisa Jura, a young musician who escaped the Nazi regime in Austria thanks to the Kindertransport rescue mission.
“The Pianist of Willesden Lane” was a book first (co-written by Golabek and Lee Cohen), then adapted into a play and directed by Hershey Felder, whose own theater concerts have visited Hartford Stage several times. (The most recent was “Our Great Tchaikovsky” last summer.)
In my Courant review of “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” in 2015, I wrote: “Golabek brings a warmth and sweetness to the stage, a genuine love and admiration for the woman she is portraying. … The real emotion of the piece lies in her piano playing, which is transcendent.”
Tickets to “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” are already on sale. Details at 860-527-5151, hartfordstage.org.
Rep Season Adds Premiere Of New Haven-Themed Legal Drama
The Yale Repertory Theatre has filled in the open slot on its 2018-19 season. It’s a new play by Karen Hartman based on recent New Haven history. “Good Faith” concerns the New Haven firefighters who were denied promotions during some political disputes in the city during the mid-’00s. The situation became a legal case about civil rights violations, and went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hartman is a prolific playwright who graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 1997. Even then, she was premiering plays on campus, including a Yale Summer Cabaret production of her Holocaust-themed drama “Leah’s Train” in 1994. Hartman had three of her plays premiere last year: “Roz and Ray,” “The Book of Joseph” and “Project Dawn.” She is senior artist in residence at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Kenny Leon, the accomplished Broadway (“The Mountaintop”) and TV (“Hairspray Live!”) director, will direct “Good Faith.” Leon is the artistic director of True Colors Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia. He directed Pearl Cleage’s “Flyin’ West” at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre in 1994.
Details of the 2018-19 Yale Rep season are at 203-432-1234, yalerep.org.
Pre-Show Announcement Of The Week
“Tonight the role of Trixie Mattel usually played by Brian Firkus will instead by played by…”
— insouciant (and incorrect) opening remarks by Brandon James Gwinn, Trixie Mattel’s opening act (and the producer of her two alt-folk albums) preparing audience for the “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” champion’s sold-out May 19 show in The Bushnell’s Belding Theater. Gwinn — and later the drag diva Mattel herself — led the audience in a “big gay singalong.” “Clap for how gay you are, Hartford,” Gwinn shouted.
Mattel proved to be a highly versatile performer — playing electric and acoustic guitar (not to mention autoharp), doing a medley of classic drag lip-synching, appearing in pre-filmed comedy shorts, singing live on her own songs (not to mention a maddening mash-up of “Landslide” and “Skater Boi”) and rasping through several stand-up routines that piled outrage upon outrage. Oh, and she changed costumes a bunch of times.
Spotted in Trixie Mattel’s Hartford audience: Connecticut actor Ellie Desautels, who played the transgender student Michael on the TV series “Rise.”
‘Menopause’ Back At Long Wharf
The Long Wharf Theatre spends its summers various ways. Last year, for instance, it hosted the Arts & Ideas festival event “(Be)Longing” in June then opened its 2017-18 season early with the national tour of “Small Mouth Sounds” in September.
But many summers in the last dozen or so years have been given over to shows such as “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” “A Couple of Blaguards” and “The Bikinis” and various permutations of “Late Nite Catechism.”
This year, June 15 to July 1 on the Long Wharf mainstage, it’s the return of “Menopause, The Musical,” which played the theater previously in 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2011.
The show, which resets familiar pop hits (“Stayin’ Alive/Night Fever”) with menopausal themes (“Stayin’ Awake/Night Sweatin’”), last played Connecticut in a 15th anniversary national tour which hit New Haven’s Shubert in early 2017 and featured Cindy Williams. The “Laverne and Shirley” co-star will not be at Long Wharf, but one of her castmates from that tour will be — Cherie Price, who plays “Soap Star,” and has appeared with various editions of “Menopause” since 2006. Another longtime veteran of the show, Roberta B. Wall, will be “Earth Mother,” Michelle E. White (who appeared in a couple of Canadian productions of “Menopause”) will be “Professional Woman” and California regional theater actress Karen Gedissman (whose cooler credits include the Ray Davies musical “80 Days” and April O’Neil in a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” musical) as “Iowa Housewife.” Details at longwharf.org.
“SNL” Acts Up
The season finale of “Saturday Night Live,” May 19, was a theater buff’s bonanza. A mockumentary segment showed host Tina Fey preparing to perform in her own Broadway musical “Mean Girls” (leading a miffed Lin-Manuel Miranda to place her in his “Burn Book”). There was a brilliant cop-show-style trailer for “Dick Wolf’s Chicago Improv” (tag line: “Life doesn’t ask for a suggestion”). There was a high school talent show routine and a sketch called “Pervert Hunters” in which a reality show wrongdoer labors to create a believable character.
The previous week’s “SNL” featured Amy Schumer as a small child starring in a production of “Lil’ Rent.”
Hey, Kids! Theater!
Several big-brand theater events for kids have been announced for Connecticut venues in recent weeks. The lively, pre-school-friendly “Disney Junior Dance Party on Tour” (sponsored by Pull-Ups Training Pants) parties Sept. 23 at the Oakdale in Wallingford, while the action-packed “Marvel Universe LIVE! Age of Heroes” throws punches Nov. 1-4 at Hartford’s XL Center.
“Disney Junior Dance Party” extended its tour due to public demand, and features Disney characters ranging from Mickey and Minnie Mouse to Vampirina, Elena of Avalor and Muppet Babies. “Marvel Universe LIVE!” takes its title seriously, cramming the stage with dozens of superheroes and supervillains.
From Jan. 11-13, The Bushnell has booked the eagerly awaited first national tour based on the “American Girl” history-themed dolls. Visitors to the flagship American Girls store in New York City will recall that it used to stage musical revues in its own small theater. “American Girl Live” is described as “a premiere stage production, featuring all-original songs and unforgettable experiences” set at a sleepover camp and featuring “your favorite American Girl characters.”
As for opportunities for kids to study theater, Playhouse on Park in West Hartford has released details of its summer youth theater programs. Eric Robertson and Michelle Pruiett, both of whom appeared in the playhouse’s 2016 production of “A Chorus Line,” will be the guest teaching artists for the Musical Theatre Preparatory Program (for students in third through eighth grade) July 16-27. The program’s main faculty includes Elizabeth Simmons, Rosie Karabetsos, and Abigail Winkler; Robertson and Pruiett will lead a two-hour master class.
The two sessions of Playhouse on Park’s Kids On Stage program (for kindergarten through fifth grade) are “Superheroes!” (June 24-29) and “Under the Sea” July 9-13. The teachers are Emily Santarsiero and Tori Mooney. Details at playhouseonpark.org.
