American Century Theater Announces COME BLOW YOUR HORN & More for 2013-14

Comedy, absurdity, history, tragedy, baseball, courtroom drama, nostalgia and music: there's not a lot that the American Century Theater's upcoming 2013-2014 theatrical season doesn't have.

COME BLOW YOUR HORN by Neil Simon (1961)
Directed by Rip Claassen
September 12-October 12, 2013
Opening night Thursday, Sept 12

TACT's first-ever Neil Simon show is his first Broadway hit, Come Blow Your Horn, more famous today for its movie adaptation starring Frank Sinatra and the Academy Award-winning song it spawned, "High Hopes" ("Everyone knows an ant can't...move a rubber tree plant!"). A funny and warm Jewish family comedy with the tradeMark Simon gags and the dramatic sensibilities he returned to later in his career with his Brighton Beach Trilogy. Rip Claassen, who found all the laughs---and then some---in TACT's classic comedies Life with Father and Visit to a Small Planet, directs.

BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY by Mark Harris (1992)
Directed by Ellen Dempsey
January 10 - February 1, 2014

Fans of baseball fiction know that Mark Harris's "Blue Sox" series is the best of the breed, with Bang the Drum Slowly the high point of that complex and realistic saga of star lefty pitcher Henry Wiggin. The moving and often funny story of how the terminal illness of one of Wiggin's teammates affects a major league baseball team was first adapted into a live TV drama starring a very young Paul Newman in 1956; the film version was Robert De Niro's first major movie role. TACT will present Harris' stage adaptation of the book just in time for the start of spring training. Ellen Dempsey directs.

OH DAD, POOR DAD, MAMA'S HUNG YOU IN THE CLOSET AND I'M FEELING SO SAD by Arthur Kopit (1962)
Directed by Tyler Herman
March 21-April 12, 2014

Facetiously described by the playwright as "A Pseudoclassical Tragifarce in a Bastard French Tradition," this antic, absurdist black comedy about the most dysfunctional family imaginable was an Off-Broadway sensation, a movie, and one of the great charade titles ever. It also launched the career of one of America's most daring and versatile playwrights, and is just as lively and funny, if not as shocking, as it was fifty years ago. Tyler Herman will be the ringmaster of this farcical freak show.

JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG by Abbe Mann (2002)
Directed by Joe Banno
May 30-June 28, 2014

It didn't reach Broadway until just a decade ago, but Mann's searing script had already been presented as an acclaimed live TV drama in the '50s and a star-studded Hollywood blockbuster in the '60s. Mann created a stage version of the courtroom drama for a limited, and much praised, Broadway run. The play is based on the true story of the war crime trials that followed WWII, and, like the post-Civil War Andersonville trial, their sole legal precedent (subject of the Saul Levitt drama that nabbed TACT its first Helen Hayes nomination for Outstanding Production of a Play), the play raises important moral issues that remain relevant and controversial today. Joe Banno directs the large cast.

THE GREAT AMERICAN CENTURY SONGBOOK by Jack Marshall and Tom Fuller (2014)
Directed by TACT Artistic Director Jack Marshall
Musical Direction by Thomas Fuller
July 18-August 16, 2014

An original musical revue, commissioned for TACT's Robert L. McElwaine "Reflections" series, by the same team responsible for crafting TACT's If Only In My Dreams, Hellzapoppin, and An American Century Theater Christmas. A cast of seven of the area's brightest musical theater talents will present an evening of the best of American folk, popular and stage music from the first third of the 20th century, and some even earlier. Featuring classics from Jolson, Canter, Victor Herbert, John Phillip Sousa, and many more, with sing-alongs and bouncing balls, this is a show that celebrates some of the most memorable tunes ever written, now in danger of being forgotten.

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