Raymond Marc Dumont

Stiles & Drewe’s THE THREE LITTLE PIGS returns to Maine State Music Theatre after its popular 2019 run in an enchanting revival directed by Raymond Marc Dumont. The production is a lighthearted, contemporized version of the traditional English fairytale, told with humor and warmth and presented with the first-class production values for which Maine State Music Theatre is known.

After three seemingly endless years, Maine's theatrical landscape has truly begun to come to life again after the pandemic. I am thrilled to be able to pen this article, having experienced a 2022 that saw the remarkable 'comebacks' of Maine's theatres. While the year was not without continued challenges, these brave, resilient companies managed to produce first-class live theatre for grateful audiences. These are my personal choices of the best in Maine for 2022, grouped by theatre company and show.

Maine State Music Theatre celebrates the world premiere of a new children’s musical, THE VERY FRACTURED TALE OF ROBIN HOOD by Randall Frizado in a clever, funny, upbeat, contemporary retelling of the Howard Pyle folktale about the legendary outlaw who robbed the rich to pay the poor in 12th century England. Helping to develop this title from script to the stage, MSMT has made a valuable contribution to the canon of children’s musical theatre, while reacquainting a new generation of youngsters with colorful characters in the source material.

Portland’s Good Theater’s final offering of its nineteenth season is a deliciously zany and stylish production of Peter Kellogg and David Friedman’s 2017 musical comedy, DESPERATE MEASURES, a witty, saucy sendup of Shakespeare’s MEASURE FOR MEASURE set in the Wild West. Directed by Brian P. Allen and Cary Libkin with musical staging by Raymond Marc Dumont, the comedy written in rhyming verse is a rollicking, madcap adventure from start to finish.

Each year Portland's Good Theater presents a holiday musical revue, written and directed by Brian P. Allen, and dedicated to celebrating a decade in American musical theatre history. Allen's show this year is devoted to the 1940s when so many of the geniuses of the a?oelegitimatea?? musical theatre style reigned supreme. The revue he has created is ambitious and comprehensive featuring twenty-five performers, including several Broadway actors, and covering the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, Cole Porter, Kurt Weill, and the Gershwins, together with many lesser-known writers. Performed with the intimacy and informality of a cabaret setting, Broadway at the Good Theater offers a nostalgic and delightful musical evening.

a?oeA very, very merry, merry, happy, happy endinga??.a?? sings the colorful cast of human beings and sea creatures as they celebrate the wedding of Prince Alexander and Melody in Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark's musical version of THE LITTLE MERMAID. And, indeed, this final 2019 Maine State Music Theatre production in the Pickard Theater proves to be just that! The third Theatre for Young Audiences show which closes another season of spectacular theatre for the Brunswick-based theatre is one of the most ambitious, completely realized productions created by MSMT's intern company.

a?oeSuperstara?? is the title of the final number in Maine State Music Theatre's third concert staging, THE MUSIC OF ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER, but the designation seems to apply just as easily to the aspirations and abilities of the young artists who brought this sensational evening of theatre to life. Each season MSMT, as part of its Educational Fellowship Program, presents a fully staged concert performance created completely by these young professionals in training, and, each year in recent memory, the offerings have grown more complex, the talent more dazzling. Last night's performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber's music bears witness to that phenomenon, offering an evening of inspired staging, strong solo and ensemble performances, and spectacular vocalism and dancing.

Judging by the squeals of delight from the youngsters attending MSMT's second Theatre for Young Audiences production of THREE LITTLE PIGS, the familiar nursery rhyme made into a musical by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe proved to be a great hit! The fifty-five minute retelling of the tale of the three piglets who leave home to make their way in the world and must outsmart the Big Bad Wolf to survive is told with charm, wit and a touch of contemporaneity and gentle messaging.

Maine State Music Theatre presents Stiles and Drewe's THREE LITTLE PIGS. This Theatre for Young Audiences show will run on July 8th with performances at 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm, and 7:30 pm. 

Just as the youthful cast sings their exuberant anthem, 'We Go Together,' at the close of GREASE, so, too, might the theatre-loving communities of Midcoast Maine find new reason to celebrate in the first-ever co-production of Maine State Music Theatre and The Public Theatre. From June 18-30, 2019, the two Equity companies have joined forces to present Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey's beloved classic, in Lewiston in a fresh, new, vibrant production that recaptures all the joy, travails, libido and angst of adolescence.

"It's like a first date, " says Christopher Schario, Executive/artistic Director of Lewiston's Public Theatre. "It's a total cross population between our institutions and our audiences," he adds. Maine State Music Director Curt Dale Clark concurs: "This co-production is helping the arts in both our communities. It's upping the ante and providing more opportunities for people to enjoy live theatre," The two artistic heads , together with the leads of the production Tanner Callicutt and Katie Brnjac are chatting with Broadway World about the first-ever collaboration between the two theatres, a new staging of the musical GREASE, performed at The Public Theatre June 18-30, 2019.

Maine State Music Theatre (MSMT) in Brunswick and The Public Theatre (TPT) in Lewiston are partnering together for the first time to bring the musical GREASE to The Public Theatre stage June 18-30.

Maine State Music Theatre (MSMT) in Brunswick and The Public Theatre (TPT) in Lewiston are partnering together for the first time to bring Grease the Musical to The Public Theatrestage. 

Maine State Music Theatre launches its 2019 Theatre for Young Audiences series with a fresh, vivid, polished production of Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark's highly original musical version of SNOW WHITE. The familiar fairytale gets a 'politically correct' overhaul in this iteration - one which despite the fact that it was written more than twenty-five years ago - remains astoundingly innovative and relevantly modern.

'It's always hard to follow an anniversary season, where you've pulled out all the stops for that special celebration,' confides Maine State Music Theatre's Artistic Director, Curt Dale Clark, as he sits down with Broadway World Maine to preview the company's upcoming 61st season. 'It's a bit scary because after the anniversary, then, what next? But the beautiful thing about what we do for a living [in the theatre] is that every year seems like an anniversary. MSMT has carved out a niche here in Brunswick where we pull out all the stops year after year. Our public expects it, and it is pour job to do it!'

In an enchantingly fresh take on Carlo Collodi's classic tale, Robin and Clark's musical version of Pinocchio explores the inner journey of the wooden puppet who must learn the meaning of truth, compassion, and courage in order to become 'a real live boy.' MSMT closes its Theatre for Young Audiences series with a colorful, amusing, and tender retelling of this touching story, directed and choreographed by Raymond Marc Dumont and entirely produced and performed by MSMT's Educational Fellows.

As its main stage finale in this Diamond Jubilee season, Maine State Music Theatre chose to present the stage version of one of the most beloved musicals of all time, Singin' in the Rain. With its book by Betty Comden/Adolph Green, and songs by Nacio Herb Brown/Arthur Freed), based on the famed MGM musical, this iconic classic receives a production that recreates the glitter of Hollywood's Golden Age on a dazzlingly grand scale. MSMT's staging, directed/choreographed by Marc Robin, sparkles with the effervescence of fine champagne, bubbles with energy and originality, exudes sunshine and joy, and offers its audiences an exhilarating, entirely magical entertainment experience.

It has been fifty-eight years since the Tony-award-winning Michael Stewart/Charles Crouse/Lee Adams musical Bye Bye Birdie first opened on Broadway, and while the topicality of the material is no longer au courant, still this fresh, charming Maine State Music Theatre revival, directed/choreographed by Raymond Marc Dumont, retains its humor, humanity, and universality.

Maine State Music Theatre (MSMT) will present Bye Bye Birdie with two performances on Monday, July 30 at 2:00 and 7:30 PM. 

MSMT's all-singing, all-dancing tribute to Irving Berlin, I Love a Piano, blew the Pickard Theater audience away at two Monday performances with its steady stream of classic hit tunes, its high energy choreography, and the dazzling virtuosity of its youthful cast. This was an afternoon and evening to sit back and revel in the rich history of American popular music and to celebrate a composer whose work provided the soundtrack for the American experience for almost seventy years. It is exciting to watch MSMT's cast of young professionals perform this material with so much connection and commitment. Though this is the music of past generations, the eleven-person ensemble of remarkable triple threat actors brings it vibrantly to life for a contemporary audience, affirming the truism that longevity is what makes great music.