Harold Hill! Winn Dixie! Billy Elliott! Someone named Ben!
Goodspeed Musicals has announced the five shows it will produce during its 2019 season. That includes three established musicals at the Goodspeed Opera House and two works-in-development at the Norma Terris Theatre in Chester.
The season will open with “The Music Man,” April 12 through June 16. Meredith Willson’s classic distillation (and satirization) of midwestern values in the early 20th century never goes out of style. The Beatles covered “Til There Was You” on their first album, and a few years ago on the Tony Awards, “The Music Man” opening number was rapped by T.I., LL Cool J and Hugh Jackman. (Hill? Hill? Hill? Hill!)
The first Norma Terris workshop of the season will be “My Name is Ben,” created by the writing duo Noisemaker (aka lyricist/book-writer Scott Gilmour and composer Claire McKenzie) and the Scottish theater company Dundee Rep. The show, which apparently uses a folk-music score to tell the true story of a kindly New Yorker named Bernhardt Wichmann III who lost his ability to speak, runs May 17 through June 9. The musical is having a concert reading in Scotland this week.
“Because of Winn Dixie,” the musical based on the best-selling children’s book by Kate DiCamillo, has had regional theater try-outs within the last few years but has not yet made it to Broadway. The show, which stars a dog, has been a pet project (so to speak) of Connecticut-based animal trainer Bill Berloni, the man who has coached countless mutts to portray Sandy in “Annie.” The book for “Because of Winn Dixie” is by Nell Benjamin, who adapted the movies “Legally Blonde” and “Mean Girls” into musicals, and who revised “The Pirates of Penzance” for the Goodspeed in 2000. Its score is by Duncan Shiek (the musicals “Spring Awakening” and “American Psycho”). “Because of Winn Dixie” runs June 28 through Sept. 1.
The second show at the Norma Terris Theatre is “Passing Through” by Brett Ryback and Eric Ulloa, which you may recognize because it had a concert reading at the Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals in January. It’s described as “the incredible true story of a young man who journeys on foot from Pennsylvania to California,” and runs July 26 through Aug. 18.
The final show of the Goodspeed season will be “Billy Elliott The Musical,” the international hit based on the 2000 film about a young British boy who wants to dance ballet. The show premiered in London in 2005 and ran for over three years on Broadway. It features a book and lyrics by the original film’s screenwriter, Lee Hall, and songs by Elton John. A more recent Lee Hall show, “Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour,” played New Haven’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas in 2016.
Cast, directors and designers have not yet been named for any of the Goodspeed shows. Season subscription packages are already on sale. Single tickets won’t go on sale to the general public until Feb. 17. Details at goodspeed.org.
Most Produced Plays And Playwrights
American Theatre magazine has released its annual list of the 10 most produced plays and 20 most produced playwrights of the current theater season. American Theatre is published by Theatre Communications Group, the national association of regional theaters that includes Hartford Stage, the Long Wharf and Yale Rep among its many members. Three hundred and eighty seven TCG member theaters contributed to this year’s survey.
The results will not surprise Connecticut theatergoers. The most produced play of the 2018-19 season, Lucas Hnath’s “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” is being done by both the Long Wharf and TheaterWorks this season.
Shows such as “Once” (#10) “Fun Home” (#6) and “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” (#3), whose national tours visited Connecticut a season or two ago, have had their performance rights trickle down to regional theaters, which have embraced them heartily.
Others in the top 10: Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat” at #2, Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley” at #4, Sarah DeLappe’s “The Wolves” (which TheaterWorks did last season) at #5, Paula Vogel’s “Indecent” (which premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2015) at #7, Karen Zacarias’ “Native Gardens” at #8 and Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” tied with “Once” for #10.
Dominique Morriseau’s “Skeleton Crew” is #9 on the play list, and Morisseau herself is the third most produced playwright this season. In Connecticut, her “Detroit ’67” will be at Hartford Stage and her “Paradise Blue” is coming to Long Wharf. (TheaterWorks was ahead of the pack, staging “Sunset Baby” in 2017.) The other top playwrights are Lucas Hnath (#1, due almost entirely to “Doll’s House 2,” though he’s written a number of other fine scripts), Lauren Gunderson (#2; her “The Revolutionists” will be at Playhouse on Park in February), Lynn Nottage (#4; “Sweat” is most popular, but Playhouse on Park and others have picked up on her “Intimate Apparel”), “Native Gardens” playwright Karen Zacarias at #5, Kate Hamill (adaptor of “Pride and Prejudice,” #6), Paula Vogel (#7), “Fun Home” book writer Lisa Kron at #8, “Curious Incident”’s Simon Stephens at #9, August Wilson (highest ranking deceased writer on the list, at #10), “The Wolves”’s Sarah DeLappe at #11, Ken Ludwig (who had “Murder on the Orient Express” at Hartford Stage and “Baskerville” at Long Wharf last season) at #12, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins at #13, Jen Silverman (whose “The Roommates” is at Long Wharf this month) at #14, Christine Ham at #15, Enda Walsh (the prolific Irish playwright who adapted “Once”) at #16, late great Tennessee Williams at #17, Bess Wohl (whose “Make Believe” opened Hartford Stage’s current season), Duncan Macmillan at #19 and the late Sam Shepard at #20.
William Shakespeare and Christmas shows are not tallied for the lists, as they would skew them unhelpfully. Details at americantheatre.org.
Westport Extends ‘La Mancha’
Westport Country Playhouse has extended its run of the musical “Man of La Mancha” with one extra performance Oct. 14 at 3 p.m.
WCP has also announced that there will be a Spanish open-caption performance on “Man of La Mancha” on Oct. 13 at 3 p.m. It’s the first time that the theater has ever offered an open-caption performance in a language other than English.
“Man of La Mancha” is a musicalization of the epic Spanish novel “Don Quixote” by Cervantes. The Westport production is directed by Mark Lamos, the theater’s artistic director (and a former artistic director of Hartford Stage). Details at westportplayhouse.org.
August Wilson Lives!
New Haven’s Yale Repertory and Long Wharf theaters will co-host a reading series in connection with their annual participation in the August Wilson Monologue Competition. The competition is a performance opportunity for high school students; regional winners move on to finals in New York City.
The kick-off event was a Sept. 27 reading of Wilson’s “The Gem of the Ocean” at New Haven Free Public Library. A reading of “Radio Golf” (one of several August Wilson plays that premiered at the Yale Rep) will be held at New Haven’s Stetson branch library Dec. 19. There will be master classes for high school students in January at various library branches and at the Long Wharf. The New Haven regional August Wilson Monologue Competition will be Feb. 28. Details at longwharf.org
