Andrea Stephenson - Page 14

The Ledge packs a great deal into just ten minutes. Using a quirky character and easy to laugh at humor, it takes a look at the very serious realities of anxiety and fear.

If you're looking for a fun show that will make you laugh and think, Theatre Harrisburg's Sylvia is just the ticket.

For a fresh experience of a musical that really took the theatre world by storm in the early 2000s, definitely take the time to see Rent: School Edition at DreamWrights. I have no doubt you will be impressed by the fearlessness, passion, and talent in this group of young performers.

The Last Night of Ballyhoo was first performed at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre and found its way to the Broadway stage in 1997 at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Written by Alfred Uhry, The Last Night of Ballyhoo takes place in 1939 in the home of Adolph Freitag in Atlanta, Georgia. The play explores themes of identity, prejudice, and inter-Jewish racism through the lives of Adolph and his sister Beulah 'Boo' Levy, their sister-in-law Reba Freitag, cousins Lala Levy (Beulah's daughter) and Sunny Freitag (Reba's daughter), and two young men-Joe Farkas from New York and Peachy Weil of the Louisana Weils. Oyster Mill Playhouse takes on this deep yet humorous play through May 12th.

The musical The Spitfire Grill was first produced Off-Broadway at the Duke Theatre in 2001. Written by James Valcq and Fred Alley, the musical is based on the 1996 film. The show presents us with a moment in the life of Percy Talbot, a young woman recently released from prison, and the residents of Gilead, where the Spitfire Grill is up for sale. The Spitfire Grill is a beautiful show that requires a strong cast and creative direction to truly come alive. Under the direction of Laurie Riffe, the cast and crew at DreamWrights Center for Community Arts deliver an authentic, heartwarming production of The Spitfire Grill.

Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot, Merlin-these names spark the imagination and bring to mind images of knights, swords, castles, and magic. The tales of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the legendary Camelot are the subject of myriad novels, movies, TV shows, songs, plays, and musicals. From the 1938 tale The Sword the Stone (which was made into the animated film by Disney in 1963) to the 2008 TV series Merlin to the 2005 Broadway show Monty Python's Spamalot (based on the 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail), for generations these stories have taken us on magical adventures. The 1960 musical Camelot, by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe is based on the T.H. White novel The Once and Future King. Camelot comes to life at Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre May 9-June 22. Check out our interview with Matthew Blake Johnson, who can be seen on stage at Dutch Apple as Mordred in Camelot.

Alfred Uhry, the playwright most well-known for Driving Miss Daisy, penned The Last Night of Ballyhoo based on his own childhood memories. The Last Night of Ballyhoo is set in Atlanta, Georgia in December 1939. It was originally performed at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre as part of the Summer Olympics Arts Festival. In 1997 it made its way to the Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway. The play explores questions of prejudice and identity through the eyes of a Jewish family in Georgia, who have assimilated to the culture around them-even displaying a Christmas tree in their house, and Joe Farkas, an Eastern European Jew whose presence forces the family to examine their inter-Jewish racism. The term Ballyhoo in the title refers to a cotillion ball being held at the country club to which the family belongs. The Last Night of Ballyhoo takes on these questions of identity with a healthy dose of southern humor and can be seen now at Oyster Mill Playhouse under the direction of Aliza Bardfield and Michael Hosler through May 12th.

Add together a foggy night, dead body, clues that point in different directions, twists and turns, and what do you get? Agatha Christie's The Unexpected Guest. The Unexpected Guest opened in 1958 in the West End and was turned into a novel by Charles Osborne in 1999. Test out your detective skills at Little Theatre Mechanicsburg where The Unexpected Guest will take the stage April 26-May 12. I had the opportunity to take a sneak peak of the first act and to speak with two of the actors-Kaitlyn Booth, portraying Laura Warwick, and Nova Lorraine, playing Inspector Thomas.

'For time is the longest distance between places' but in the case of an iconic play like The Glass Menagerie, time seems to melt away. Tennessee Williams based the play on his 1943 short story 'Portrait of a Girl in Glass.' The Glass Menagerie premiered in 1944 in Chicago where it caught the attention of critics Ashton Stevens and Claudia Cassidy. With their help, the producers were able to move the play to Broadway, where it opened at the Playhouse Theatre in 1945. In The Glass Menagerie, the character Tom serves as both narrator and character in a play that is memory and yet somehow very real and present. The Glass Menagerie runs April 4-April 14 at Hershey Area Playhouse.

In 1970, John-Michael Tebelak's master's thesis, Godspell, was first performed at Carnegie Mellon. Then in 1971, after a run at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Stephen Schwartz was hired to re-score the show before being produced off-Broadway. Godspell, which is primarily based on parables from the Gospel of Matthew (with a few from the Gospel of Luke and one from John), has had several revivals and numerous tours. Audiences can enjoy a unique interpretation of Godspell at Prima opening April 5th. To find out more about this upcoming production, I spoke with director J. Scott Lapp and Tayler Harris, the actor portraying Jesus.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the first publicly performed collaboration between Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, first appeared on Broadway in 1982. The musical actually began its life as a short pop cantata in London, and it was modified and expanded a number of times before it appeared on Broadway. The musical is based on the story of Joseph from the Book of Genesis. In the musical, the story about Joseph is told by the Narrator, a character who exists outside the time and place in which the story takes place. It's the Narrator's job to engage the audience and draw them into the story of Joseph. Broadway World recently spoke to Erica Clare, who portrays the Narrator in the upcoming production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre.