Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold - Page 13

'I imagine that Danny is the youngest in a family of boys, and he feels he has to live up to the name Zuko at Rydell High. In the movie he says 'I've got a reputation to protect,' and I think that goes a long way to explaining his behavior.' Neil Starkenberg is commenting on his role debut in Maine State Music Theatre's upcoming production of Grease, which begins a run at the Pickard Theater on July 19. For the twenty-eight year-old actor, the iconic part of the fifties greaser, Danny Zuko, is a dream come true, and Starkenberg has spent a great deal of time preparing for the part.

Director, producer, actor Brian P. Allen is a born raconteur with a wicked sense of humor and his latest version of his hilarious one-man show, Blueberries, Broadway, and Brian, which he performed at the Strand Theater in Rockland and will reprise in Springvale, ME, speaks to Allen's wit, turn of phrase, and deliciously outrageous sense of humor.

'There have been so many musical threads throughout my life ever since I was a little guy. Music was something I did early on. I would listen to my dad, who had a beautiful voice, sing, and together we would listen to his vinyl record collection. I was always drawn to music written before I was born. There is something about the vulnerability, the universality, and the craft of earlier music that has always attracted me.' The speaker is Peter Oyloe who is touring with The Hank Band, his concert recreation of the music of the legendary folk/country western singer. Oyloe and the band's most recent gig was to open Maine State Music Theatre's 2017 Monday concert series with two virtually sold out performances of Hank Williams' music at Brunswick's Pickard Theater on July 10th. In conversation with Broadway World in the panoramic setting of a private reception in the band's honor on scenic Mere Point, Oyloe seems exceptionally soft spoken, but a few hours later when he takes the stage as Hank Williams, he transforms himself into the powerhouse singer Williams was. It is a role that has changed his life, Oyloe says, and a connection that now runs deeply as one of the primary threads in his own musical tapestry.

Four hundred and forty-five years later French playwright Moliere still bubbles with joyous, effervescent, sometimes mordant wit, and it is just this sparkle that Theater at Monmouth's new production of The Learned Ladies serves up in generous, exuberant fashion in an elegantly translated (uncredited), briskly performed, hugely witty comedy of manners about the affectations of a group of philosophy-loving women and the gender politics of their world.

'It's a warhorse and has been a guaranteed sellout since 1950, but that doesn't mean a production doesn't need a little spark. DJ [Salisbury] did exactly what I asked him to do,' says Maine State Music Theatre's Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark. 'I asked him not to reinvent the wheel, but to tweak the show with some new nuances.' Clark is talking about MSMT's new production of Guys and Dolls which opened last week to glowing reviews. Clark was part of the popular MSMT community series, PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN panel that also featured Guys and Dolls stars, James Beaman (Nathan Detroit), Kristen Hahn (Sarah Brown), and Stephen Mark Lukas (Sky Masterson), as well as Props Master Elizabeth Frino. Moderated by Broadway World's Maine editor Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold, the participants at the capacity-crowd event discussed the making of this exciting new production in Midcoast Maine.

Part of the perennial appeal of Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls lies in the larger-than-life aura of its Damon Runyonesque roots - its fantasy land of gangsters and dolls, Broadway in the Prohibition era, and memorable characters who sing, dance, and deliver wise-cracks. Maine State Music Theatre's new production, the fifth in the company's history, brings this classic to life with a vivid freshness that embraces both the grand framework of the story and the intimacy of its essential heart. Sweet, sassy, and colorful, soaring and ambitious, MSMT's second show of the 2017 season is breathtakingly daring in the way it utilizes all the company's resources to their fullest, all the while that it demonstrates to a new generation why Guys and Dolls both invented and broke the mold for American musical theatre.

"She's a wonderfully layered character," Kristen Hahn exclaims as she describes her newest role. "Most of all in her heart she wants to help people, but she is not quite cut out to rule with an iron fist like her mentor, General Cartwright. I think at first she is feeling a little lost and not willing to admit it. When she meets Sky Masterson, they go head-to-head. She is probably the first woman to challenge him. As the play develops, she realizes maybe she can have both her mission work and love. By letting her hair down a little when she discovers love, she realizes that she becomes of better use to the people she wants to help. It is very liberating for her. Sarah Brown is a strong lady, and that is a wonderful treat for an actress to play!" she concludes.

'There's this line in the show that I think is key to understanding Sky and Sarah's romance. 'Chemistry?' she asks, and he says, 'Yeah, chemistry.' The message is that when that connection between two people happens, it doesn't really matter what you've predicted for yourself. What's real is the chemistry, not the intellectual idea. Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown each have qualities the other is lacking, and together they fill in the gaps.' The speaker is the charismatic young actor, Stephen Mark Lukas, who will be making his Maine State Music Theatre debut in his first ever performances as the suave gambler Sky Masterson in Frank Loesser Guys and Dolls, which runs at the Pickard Theater from June 28-July 15.

'We wanted to go big and grand. We knew we had Christine [Mild] with her powerhouse performance and Charis [Leos] so we wanted to play it large and create an environment that would support them. The production concept we came up with turned out to be a wonderful envelope to wrap around the show and the entire staging fell into place.' Co-director/choreographer Marc Robin was talking about his and Curt Dale Clark's vision for their new staging of Always, Patsy Cline, which opened Maine State Music Theatre's 2017 season on June 7th. Robin was part of a panel that also featured Patsy star Christine Mild and stand-by Heidi Kettenring, MSMT Charge Scenic Artist Sean Cox, and MSMT Board Vice President Kristine Ganong. The discussion on June 14th, moderated by Broadway World Maine editor Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold was the first in the now four-year-old summer series of free public forums, A Peek Behind the Curtain, held at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. The series, designed to give theatre-goers insight into the creative processes of producing each of the summer main stage shows, featured a lively and far-reaching conversation about Patsy Cline, MSMT's Theatre for Young Audiences program, and the theatre's burgeoning role in the community.

MSMT opens its Theatre for Young Audiences with three performances of Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark's musical retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairytale, Sleeping Beauty, in a striking visual production, performed with energy, conviction, and style by a company of young actors. The hour-long musical version puts a contemporary spin on the familiar story and subtly raises issues and values which seem remarkably current, despite the fact that the show was written more than twenty years ago.

'I love it here! This Always, Patsy Cline will be the twenty-sixth production I've appeared in with MSMT, and by the end of this summer, the number will be twenty-nine.' Actress Charis Leos - a huge favorite with Maine audiences and critics alike - is reflecting on her long association with the Brunswick theatre and what the future holds for her here and in the other numerous regional theatres where she lights up the stage with her vibrant, inimitable gifts as a musical theatre performer.

About half way through the musical, Always, Patsy Cline, Louise says of the legendary singer, 'She blew the roof off that old honky tonk!' And much the same could be said for the electric atmosphere at the Brunswick's Pickard Theater, where MSMT opened its 59th season with a dazzling production of the musical that includes twenty-seven songs made famous by the singer, who remains to this day - fifty-four years after her untimely death - a towering presence in the world of country and pop music. With true betes de scene, Christine Mild as Patsy and Charis Leos as Louise, accompanied by a virtuoso band, performing an unforgettable songbook, this production delivers not only powerhouse vocal-dramatic values, but also offers the audience a vibrant and poignant journey to another time and place that magically come alive through in the charismatic story of its protagonists. The Ted Swindley musical which focuses on the last six years of Patsy Cline's life and on her friendship with a Texas divorcee and fan, Louise Seger, is so much more than a catalog of songs strung together by a chronological narrative. Indeed, the book is touching well-constructed - funny, sad, warm and human by turns - and the songs are integrated into the story with a seamlessness that lets the play move from reality to memory.

'It's all in the way she placed her voice. I like to call it the Kermit the Frog place - the soft palate at the back of the throat, and that's what activates the yodel, the catch, the cry, the growl which are the iconic hallmarks of her singing. Patsy Cline wasn't really a technical singer; this all just came naturally to her, but for me as an actress and technical singer who has to do the show eight times a week, I have to make sure I am singing in a healthy, safe way and understand how to make that happen. So if I place the voice right - if I place it in the 'Patsy place'- it all happens without trying.'

It's hard to imagine why this gem of a show had such a short Broadway run, but it is finding new life in regional productions, not the least of which opened here at South Portland's Lyric Music Theater this past weekend. Directed by Mary Meserve with sparkling choreography by Raymond Marc Dumont and featuring a large cast with strong vocal-dramatic abilities, anchored by Eric Berry-Sandelin's charismatic performance as Frank Abagnale, Jr., this is a delight not to be missed!

“The All Night Strut has a songbook to die for! It may not be as riotously funny as The Irish and How They Got Way was,” says Maine State Music Theatre's Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, but I know from experience that the audience will leave the theatre exhilarated!” Clark, who will co-produce the show with Anita Stewart, Artistic Director of Portland Stage, describes the musical revue as “a collection of vignettes, each of which plays out before the next one begins. It is sort of like an evening of short stories that paints a colorful and poignant picture of 20th century America in the years of the Great Depression, World War II, and the post-war.”

Maine State Music Theatre hosted a special series of free FILM FRIDAYS events which previewed the summer shows, showed the original (or subsequent) movie and offered a talkback with Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, in interview with BWW's Maine Editor, Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold. Here is an sli8ghtly edited version of the talkback of May 17, 2017, which discussed the 1992 Kenny Ortega film version of NEWSIES and the 2012 Broadway staging, and gave some hints about what Midcoast Mine could expect this summer at MSMT! Have a look/ listen!

Mad Horse Theatre's 2018 has certainly pushed the envelope in repertoire choices, fearlessly programming provocative, often dark, edgy, but always intensely human plays. Its last selection of the season, Anne Washburn's 2012 Mr. Burns, A Post Electric Play, coming on the heels of The Nether and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, brings this adventurous season to a stirring conclusion.

The rain was pouring down outside and the aroma of fresh hot popcorn wafted through the Morrell Meeting Room as a sizeable crowd gathered on this gloomy Friday evening at Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick to enjoy a new public film series, created by MSMT, hosted by Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, and facilitated by Olivia Wenner, Group Sales and Outreach Manager. The project, part of MSMT's community outreach program, is entitled Film Fridays and offers free screenings in HD and surround sound of three movie musicals which will be produced in their stage versions this summer at MSMT. The movies are then followed by a talkback with Curt Dale Clark, moderated by Broadway World Maine Editor Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold and - to add a little levity and spice - by a special trivia contest with prize of two complimentary tickets to MSMT's stage show for the winner.

"This is probably the hardest play I have ever done," director Reba Short confides about her latest assignment, Mr. Burns, a Post Electric Play that opens at South Portland's Mad Horse Theatre Company Friday, May 5th. "There are so many moving parts to this play. I have had to call up every class ever took in college and every skill I've ever learned. It's a very complicated work that moves from realism to kabuki like stylization and takes place in three distinct realms and times. I completely understand why [playwright] Anne Washburn called it a 'beast of a play.'"

There are plenty of reasons to make Maine your summer destination: the breathtaking coastline, beautiful beaches, pristine trails to hike, waterways to sail, and wildlife to observe. But Maine also has a long history of being home to respected summer theatres, and in recent seasons the wealth of performance offerings has not only increased in number, but also in quality. Maine can proudly say that it boasts some of the finest regional theatre companies in the country. Here are my editorial picks among the many possibilities for theatre-lovers.