Hershey Area Playhouse Announces 2014 Season: GYPSY, THE FANTASTICKS & More

Classic musicals, comedy and drama are all on the lineup for the 2014 Hershey Area Playhouse season including: The Fantasticks, February 13-16, 20-23, 2014; Leading Ladies , April 24-27, May 1-4, 2014; Gypsy, July 17-20, 24-27, 2014, Ten Little Indians, October 9-12, 16-19, 2014 and A Christmas Carol (Traditional), December 4-7, 11-14, 2014.

The Fantasticks, by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones, is a musical that tells the story of two neighboring fathers who trick their children, Luisa and Matt, into falling in love by pretending to feud. The fathers hire traveling actors to stage a mock abduction, so that Matt can heroically seem to save Luisa, ending the supposed feud. When the children discover the deception, they reject the arranged love match and separate. Each then gains disillusioning experiences of the real world. They return to each other bruised but enlightened, and they renew their vows with more maturity. The show features memorable songs including "Try to Remember." The show's original off-Broadway production ran a total of 42 years and 17,162 performances, making it the world's longest-running musical.

Leading Ladies is a hilarious comedy by Ken Ludwig, the author of Lend Me A Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo. Two English Shakespearean actors, Jack and Leo, find themselves so down on their luck that they are performing "Scenes from Shakespeare" on the Moose Lodge circuit in the Amish country of Pennsylvania. When they hear that an old lady in York, PA is about to die and leave her fortune to her two long lost English nephews, they resolve to pass themselves off as her beloved relatives and get the cash. The trouble is, when they get to York, they find out that the relatives aren't nephews, but nieces! Romantic entanglements abound, especially when Leo Falls head-over-petticoat in love with the old lady's vivacious niece, Meg, who's engaged to the local minister. Meg knows that there's a wide world out there, but it's not until she meets "Maxine and Stephanie" that she finally gets a taste of it.

The summer musical, Gypsy, is based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee and was a project of producer David Merrick and actress Ethel Merman.Determined to make her young, blonde, and beautiful daughter, June, a vaudeville headliner, willful, resourceful, domineering stage mother Rose Hovick will stop at nothing to achieve her goal. She drags June and her shy, awkward, and decidedly less-talented older sister, Louise, around the country in an effort to get them noticed. Favorite songs include: "Everything's Coming Up Roses," "Let Me Entertain You," and "Small World."

Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians is the story of ten strangers invited to spend a weekend at a remote mountaintop home. After dinner, they learn that they've been invited to the house to pay for their crimes. Unable to leave the house, the guests are being killed off one by one according to the poem of "Ten Little Indians." As the number of survivors decreases, they begin to believe that the killer is one in the group, but are unable to decide who.

Wrapping up the season is the classic holiday favorite, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The story tells of bitter and miserly Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation resulting from supernatural visits from Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. A Christmas Carol remains popular, has never been out of print and has been adapted to film, stage, opera, and other media multiple times.

Season tickets are available at www.HersheyAreaPlayhouse.com and at the box office at 717.533.8525. Individual tickets will be on sale in the near future. To get involved in Playhouse productions, learn about acting classes, support The Playhouse or sign up for the mailing list, please visit the website.

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