Marymount Manhattan College's Spring Theatre Festival Continues Next Week

Marymount Manhattan College (MMC), a private liberal arts college on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and the college's celebrated musical theatre program, will present a spring theatre festival honoring three generations of musical writers - Richard Rodgers, renowned composer of American popular music and Broadway shows; his daughter, Mary Rodgers, author of Freaky Friday and composer of the Broadway musical comedy, Once Upon a Mattress; and her son, Adam Guettel, composer and lyricist, and Tony winner for his musical The Light in the Piazza.

The festival, which kicked off in late January with a "gypsy run-thru" showing of South Pacific at the National Dance Institute for Learning & the Arts in Harlem, is making its way to the Theresa Lang Theatre at Marymount Manhattan College in early March (4 - 8) with a stage production of Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas' musical play, The Light in the Piazza - a play that sweeps the audience up in an intensely passionate, lush and romantic experience that transcends the cynicism of contemporary urban life, and celebrates love in its many forms. The production is directed by Bethany C. Elkin, with musical direction by Justin S. Fischer, and features Mr. Guettel's five-piece orchestration.

The next stop for the festival, in late March (25-28) is at The York Theatre Company at Citicorp Center. Here, Marymount Manhattan College's musical theatre program will present Mary Rodgers' Once Upon a Mattress, a comic musical retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale "The Princess and the Pea," with music by Mary Rodgers, lyrics by Marshall Barer, and book by Jay Thompson, Marshall Barer, and Dean Fuller. Reimagined in the Roaring 20's, the MMC production recasts the royal family as a Gatsbyesque aristocracy, the Ladies in Waiting as a gaggle of flappers, and surrounds the Minstrel with a troupe of madcap vaudevillians. The direction and choreography will be by Parallel Exit performer Ryan Kasprzak, and music direction by W. Brent Sawyer. The Michael Feinstein American Songbook winner for this year, Madelyn Baillio, plays the character of Winifred, and The York Theatre Company artistic director, James Morgan, will design sets.

A unique aspect of this spring festival is the series of master classes taught by Adam Guettel. Over the course of five sessions, Mr. Guettel will be coaching Marymount Manhattan College musical theatre students in song studies of compositions by himself, his mother and writers he admires. The classes will serve as a companion piece to the festival.