Stage Notes: Christmas plays cast at Hartford Stage, CT Rep

Christmas show casts

Two Christmas shows have announced their casts. The spirits and townsfolk of “A Christmas Carol — A Ghost Story of Christmas” at Hartford Stage will feel like a familiar community, because all the adult actors from last season will be returning for the show’s 21st season, which runs Nov. 23 to Dec. 29.

That includes “new Scrooge” Michael Preston (who took over the role from long-serving humbugger Bill Raymond last season), Robert Hannon Davis as Bob Cratchit, Noble Shropshire as Jacob Marley/Mrs. Dilber, Rebecka Jones as Spirit of Christmas Past/Bettye Pidgeon/Old Josie, Alan Rust as Spirit of Christmas Present/Bert, Sarah Killough as Ghostly Apparition/Weird Sister/Fred’s Sister-in-Law, Terrell Donnell Sledge as Scrooge-at-30/Fred, Shauna Miles as Mrs. Cratchit/Mrs. Fezziwig, Vanessa R Butler as Fred’s Wife/Belle, Kenneth De Abrew as First Solicitor/Undertaker/Fezziwig, John-Andrew Morrison as Mr. Marvel (Michael Preston’s old role, before he became Scrooge) and Buzz Roddy as Second Solicitor.

Also in the show: Hartt School students Christopher Bailey, Patrick Conaway, Austin Doughty, Karla Gallegos, Holly Hill, Aubrey Jowers, Mark Lawrence, Peter Mann, Rachel Moses, Ariana Ortmann, Haley Tyson, Leslie Blake Walker, Matthew Werner and Reid Williams. Plus a slew of adorable London street urchins; those child performers have yet to be announced. Details at hartfordstage.org.

UConn’s Connecticut Repertory Theatre is performing Paula Vogel’s historical drama “A Civil War Christmas” Nov. 29 through Dec. 9 with a couple of professional actors amid a cast that is mostly made up of students.

The Equity actors are Forrest McClendon playing Decatur Bronson, and Tabatha Gayle as Rose. Student performers include Deanna Hepple as Jess. All the other students each have a key role and also serve as members of the chorus: Angela Hunt (Hannah), Tristan Rewald (Hay), Carly Polistina (Mary Surratt), Aaron Bantum and Perry Madison (Black Soldiers), Rob Barnes (Abraham Lincoln), Nikolai Fernandez (coincidentally playing a character named Nicholai), Erin Cessna (Mary Todd Lincoln), Sebastian Nagpal (Ely Parker), Alex Campbell (Elizabeth Keckley), Nicholas Greika (Lamon), Bryan Mittelstadt (Ulysses S. Grant), Kristen Wolfe (Raz) and Pearl Matteson (Clara Barton).

“A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration,” has music by Daryl Waters. Vogel’s script is set in Washington, D.C., in 1864 and tells several different stores: of soldiers on both sides of the Civil War, of escaped slaves and of the president and first lady celebrating Christmas at the White House.

The show had its premiere in 2008 at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven. The UConn production will be directed by Elizabeth Van Dyke. Details at crt.uconn.edu.

No Boundaries at Yale Rep

Yale Repertory Theatre has announced the two events in this season’s No Boundaries series.

One of them had four performances in the Hartford area just last month. Alex Alpharaoh will return with his one-man show “Wet: A DACAmented Journey,” a multi-character drama based on his own experiences growing up in California as a “Dreamer,” brought into the U.S. by his parents at the age of three months. ”Wet” will have three performances at the Rep’s Iseman Theater in New Haven Dec. 13 to 15 at 8 p.m. Alpharaoh performed the show at Hartford Public Library, HartBeat Ensemble’s Carriage House theater and the University of St. Joseph’s Autorino Center in October.

The other No Boundaries event is “What Remains,” a multi-disciplinary spoken-word, dance, music and movement piece directed and choreographed by Will Rawls with text by poet Claudia Rankine, a 2016 MacArthur “genius grant” recipient. Rankine was in New Haven in March receiving a Visionary Leadership Award from the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.

“What Remains” is performed by Rawls and Rankine themselves and also involves the photographer filmmaker John Lucas and composer/designer Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste. The piece was developed at BRIC in New York City, had its world premiere this past April at Bard College in New York state, was back in NYC courtesy of Danspace Project in September, will be in Chicago in early December, and will hit New Haven (at the Iseman Theater) Feb. 14 to 16.

The Rep describes No Boundaries as a series that “explores the frontiers of theatrical invention through cutting-edge and thought-provoking performance from around the world.” yalerep.org.

A third trip for ‘Orient Express’

“Murder on the Orient Express” continues to chug around the country. Ken Ludwig’s stage adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel was at Hartford Stage in February, with the same director (Emily Mann) and most of the same cast members who were involved with the show’s 2017 premiere at the McCarter Theatre in New Jersey.

Now “Murder on the Orient Express” is at California’s La Mirada Theatre through Nov. 11. This production has a different director (Sheldon Epps) and a completely different cast, including New Haven native Tony Amendola as Hercule Poirot. lamiradatheatre.com.

Anika Noni Rose’s reading list

I chatted with Anika Noni Rose Nov. 5 at the 2018 Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame ceremony. (Rose was being inducted alongside Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club and American Ballet Theatre co-founder Lucia Chase.) While discussing her school days in Bloomfield, Rose told me, “I was a great nerd. I still read anything and everything.”

So I had to ask: “Read any good books lately?” Yes, she has, recommending the novels “An American Marriage” by Tayari Jones and “Freshwater” by Akwaeke Emezi, Abeer Y. Hoque’s memoir “Olive Witch”; and Madeline Albright’s current-events tome “Fascism: A Warning.”

As for her recent stage success in the title role of “Carmen Jones” at New York’s Classic Stage Company, Anika Noni Rose said the musical (a 1954 reworking of the Bizet opera “Carmen”) was “something I wanted to do my entire career. It came at exactly the right time. What an exhilarating experience!”

R.I.P. María Irene Fornés

María Irene Fornés died Oct. 30. The influential Cuban-American playwright was 88. Her work was too precious, too experimental, too outre for commercial theaters, but in areas where college and experimental theaters ruled, she was, and remains, a force to be reckoned.

In Connecticut, her best known play “Fefu and Her Friends” was chosen to mark a changing of the guards at the Yale Repertory Theatre, in 1991 when Stan Wojewodski took over as artistic director of the Rep following Lloyd Richards.

The production of “Fefu” required audiences to follow actors across the stage, into the auditorium and lobby and backstage to the green room and dressing rooms. Fornés’ 17-scene abstract domestic-abuse drama “Mud” was staged by the Yale Cabaret in February and at Connecticut College in 2016.