Almost, Maine Photos - Off-Broadway

Winner of both the Tony and Olivier Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for author Bruce Norris, Clybourne Park is a razor-sharp satire about the politics of race and real estate. The play returns to London following sell out runs at The Royal Court and in the West End.

Geva Theatre Center presents the world premiere of Hard Cell, by Brent Askari and directed by Skip Greer, in the Elaine P. Wilson Stage from January 8 through February 3.

Los Altos Hills will be alive with The Sound of Music this summer, when multi-award winning Foothill Music Theatre presents the Tony, Grammy, and Academy Award-winning musical. This beloved musical, set in Austria in 1938, follows novice Maria Rainer who becomes the governess for the von Trapp family, capturing the hearts of the seven children and their father, a widowed naval captain. As the Nazis occupy Austria, the family is forced make decisions which forever change their lives, fleeing their home in pursuit of freedom. Director Milissa Carey, music director William Liberatore, and choreographers Brett and C.J. Blankenship breathe new life into this classic tale of hope, love, and family. The Sound of Music will play July 19- August 5, 2018(press opening: July 20) at the Smithwick Theatre, I-280 & El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills. Tickets ($12 - $32) and information can be found at www.foothill.edu/theatre or by phone at (650) 949-7360.    

Multi-award winning Foothill Music Theatre will give Bay Area audiences their first look at the 2014 revised version of the acclaimed Broadway musical Side Show. This dazzling work, featuring music by Henry Krieger (Dreamgirls), and book/lyrics by Bill Russell (Pageant, Lucky Duck), was nominated for four 1998 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, and Best Actress. The 2014 revival, which incorporates a revised script and several new songs, received additional critical acclaim, was nominated for five Drama Desk Awards including Outstanding Revival, and was awarded the 2015 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Musical. Side Show is based on the true story of Daisy and Violet Hilton, conjoined twins who rose from a sideshow attraction to become sensational vaudeville stars in the 1930s. Side Show will be directed by Milissa Carey, with musical direction by Dolores Duran-Cefalu, and choreography by Brett and CJ Blankenship and will playMarch 2 - 19, 2017 (press opening: March 3, 2017) with performances 7:30pm Thursdays, 8:00pm Fridays & Saturdays, and 2pm Sundays at the Lohman Theatre, 12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills. Tickets ($12 - $32) and information can be found at www.foothill.edu/theatre or by phone at(650) 949-7360.

'You really don't choose this business; it chooses you,' Jessica Lee Goldyn says of her becoming a professional dancer and actress while still in her teens. That bright career which has taken her to Broadway and around the country performing in musical theatre now brings her to Brunswick, Maine, to reprise the role of Elizabeth in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, which opened at Maine State Music Theatre August 6th. The role of Frederick Frankenstein's glamorous and fickle wife has been tailored to her extraordinary dancing abilities by director Marc Robin, and, as she tells Broadway World a few days before opening, she is enjoying the experience enormously!

Musical theatre actress Amanda Rose has been living her dream since her graduation from Charleston College over a decade ago; she has been performing steadily on Broadway, on tour, and in regional theatres across the country. Now based in New York City, she, nonetheless, understands that an actress' life is peripatetic and unpredictable, and she relishes the new experiences that come with her journey.

Portland's Good Theater has mounted the Maine premiere of Jeffrey Thatcher's wacky, wickedly funny comedy, Mrs. Mannerly, a two-character spoof of the obsession with politeness, manners, and surface polish which often disguises truths. Set in the 1960s in Steubenville, OH, Hatcher tells the tale of a character (bearing his own name) who takes on the challenge of trying to achieve a perfect score in the etiquette class of the fearsome Mrs. Mannerly, long a town institution. Jeffrey's quest leads him to crack the facade of Mrs. Mannerly's presentation and past, and in so doing to discover that inner and outer reality frequently have little in common.

South Portland's Mad Horse Theatre Company opened its 2024-2015 season with a riveting revival of Arthur Miller's 1955 tragedy, A View from the Bridge, which in the hands of this talented ensemble proves as relevant and wrenching as it was almost sixty years ago. Miller's family drama about an Italian-American longshoreman struggling to make not only a living in the shadowy world of the Brooklyn waterfront, but also to make some sense of his life, which has been turned upside down by the arrival of his wife's cousins. As in all of Miller's plays, Eddie Carbone's tragedy is both an intimate, personal one and one with the monumental repercussions of a Greek drama,. Thus, brilliantly and idiomatically captured as it is by this brave little theatre company, situated on the rocky seaport coast of Maine some four hundred miles north of Brooklyn's docks. the fall of this 'little man' still resonates with mighty pathos and universal meaning.

In the last of its 'Peek Behind the Curtain' series, Maine State Music Theatre presented a lively talkback which highlighted the company's final production of Footloose, as well as touching on the intern program, a review of the 2014 season and a preview of the coming 2015 lineup. Broadway World local editor Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold interviewed Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, Audience Services Manager Susie Sharp, Resident Sound Designer Colin Whitely, Footloose principal David Ruprecht, and MSMT 'Angels' Judie Lemons and Bill Heaphy.

Early in the first act of the Tom Snow - Dean Pitchford 1998 musical Footloose, Ren declares his passion for dancing - 'I can't sit still' - and, indeed, by the end of the evening at the Pickard Theatre, the audience for Maine State Music Theatre echoes his mantra. They are cheering, swaying, and shouting to the music, and embracing the exuberant, touching message of this show. Directed and choreographed brilliantly by Patti Colombo (assisted by Karl Warden) and performed by a dynamic cast, this fourth and final production of MSMT's 2014 season dazzles and delights.

The intern program at Maine State Music Theatre is one of the company's finest features, and what better way to showcase these talented 2014 performers than as the youthful, energetic ensemble in the Steven Schwartz/John-Michael Tebelak rock musical, GODSPELL. Billed as a concert performance, this production directed by Curt Dale Clark, is actually fairly elaborate in terms of choreography and musical-dramatic staging. Clark sets a compelling pace - ninety minutes of sheer joie de vivre - and he draws from these young actors highly individualized and detailed characterizations, at the same time that he inspires the kind of ensemble dynamic so crucial to this show: the sense of love and sharing that resonates with the play's message and communicates to the audience.

Maine State Music Theatre hosted its second talkback in its series, 'A Peek Behind the Curtain,' on July 2, 2014, at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. The six-person panel moderated by BWW's Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold, was comprised of Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, Advisory Board and 'Angel' member Lee Gilman, Costume Rental Supervisor Amy Mussman, and actors James Patterson (Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain), Kathy Voytko (Fannie Chamberlain), and Sam Weber (Tom Chamberlain) explored the experience of creating the revival of Sarah Knapp and Steven M. Alper's musical, Chamberlain A Civil War Romance. The near-capacity crowd at the Morrell Reading Room was treated to a lively exchange among the panel members and audience, laced with the warmth, camaraderie, and obvious affection for the company and the work.

On June 13, 2014, Maine State Music Theatre inaugurated the first of a new series of talkbacks, called 'A Peek Behind the Curtain,' designed to share with its audiences the ingredients which go into putting together a successful theatre season. Broadway World local editor, Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold, was invited to interview a panel comprised of actors, creative and administrative team members from their current show, The Buddy Holly Story, after which the floor was opened to the audience for questions. The event, held at the Curtis Memorial Library, drew a large and enthusiastic crowd, and the exchange was informative, entertaining, and in many ways, an inspiring tribute to the work the company does and to the theatrical profession these artists hold dear. The panelists were Stephanie Dupal. MSMT Managing Director, Kyle Melton, Props Master, Matthew J. Riordan, who plays Niki Sullivan and Tommy Allsup; Lore Eure who portrays Vi Petty, and Chari Burdick, Secretary of the MSMT Angels, a volunteer support group for the theatre.

In undertaking Bernard Pomerance's 1977 play, The Elephant Man, the Studio Theatre of Bath delivers a remarkably thoughtful performance of the poignant period drama. The play, well known from its London and New York runs and subsequent film and television versions, fares surprisingly well when returned to its roots in a small venue -(the New York premiere was at the York Theatre in St. Peter's Church) - and to a gritty, old-fashioned ambiance. Using the black box Curtis Room of Bath's Chocolate Church Arts Center, the company creates the dingy, often repressive world of late Victorian London, a world caught in the throes of ideological struggle between science and faith, Darwinism and Christian morality. Pomerance raises serious questions about the existence of a Creator, who would permit such overwhelming suffering, and without offering the consolation of an answer, he is still able to have his tragic hero, John Merrick, affirm that 'the mind is the standard of the man.'