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If you've been kicking yourself for missing the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's Tony Award-winning revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's COMPANY when it was here in town and if you really couldn't afford to make it to New York City to watch it on Broadway — well, you're going to have another chance. How's that, you might ask? It's true that the show closed at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on July 1. But here's the exciting news: TV producer Ellen M. Krass filmed the matinee and evening performances June 30 and is negotiating with producers of the PBS series Great Performances to broadcast Company. A date to air the program has not been set. Krass has made TV films of concert versions of two other shows with music and lyrics by Sondheim, Follies in 1986 and Sweeney Todd in 2001. This is great news for local fans — and yet another way that theater fans across the United States will be reminded that the Cincinnati Playhouse is one of our nation's best regional theaters.
Every January I remind readers of an annual event I love to attend, a faculty recital by PATRICIA LINHART, who teaches voice to musical theater students at UC's College-Conservatory of Music. If winter weather has prevented you from attending, you have no excuse on Wednesday when she joins with another musical theater veteran, TERRY LABOLT, for a Fourth of July concert at Rising Star Opera Theater in Rising Sun, Ind. It's at 3 p.m. in the Festival Tent (on Poplar Street, just off Main Street, in the beautiful small town), and Linhart and Labolt have both talent and a sense of humor that's sure to entertain. If you're enticed by the venue, you should check out the rest of the line-up that Rising Star is offering this summer: Meredith Willson's "trouble in River City" show, The Music Man (Friday-Sunday), operatic versions of Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood (July 13-15) and Rossini's The Barber of Seville (July 20-21).
If you've been kicking yourself for missing the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's Tony Award-winning revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's COMPANY when it was here in town and if you really couldn't afford to make it to New York City to watch it on Broadway — well, you're going to have another chance. How's that, you might ask? It's true that the show closed at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on July 1. But here's the exciting news: TV producer Ellen M. Krass filmed the matinee and evening performances June 30 and is negotiating with producers of the PBS series Great Performances to broadcast Company. A date to air the program has not been set. Krass has made TV films of concert versions of two other shows with music and lyrics by Sondheim, Follies in 1986 and Sweeney Todd in 2001. This is great news for local fans — and yet another way that theater fans across the United States will be reminded that the Cincinnati Playhouse is one of our nation's best regional theaters. ...
Every January I remind readers of an annual event I love to attend, a faculty recital by PATRICIA LINHART, who teaches voice to musical theater students at UC's College-Conservatory of Music. If winter weather has prevented you from attending, you have no excuse on Wednesday when she joins with another musical theater veteran, TERRY LABOLT, for a Fourth of July concert at Rising Star Opera Theater in Rising Sun, Ind. It's at 3 p.m. in the Festival Tent (on Poplar Street, just off Main Street, in the beautiful small town), and Linhart and Labolt have both talent and a sense of humor that's sure to entertain. If you're enticed by the venue, you should check out the rest of the line-up that Rising Star is offering this summer: Meredith Willson's "trouble in River City" show, The Music Man (Friday-Sunday), operatic versions of Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood (July 13-15) and Rossini's The Barber of Seville (July 20-21). Information: www.risingstarsingers.org ...
How about some long-range planning for your theater enjoyment: Take out your calendar for the fall and put a big red circle around Oct. 18. Why? It's the NATIONAL FREE NIGHT OF THEATRE 2007, sponsored by TCG (Theatre Communications Group), a service organization for nonprofit theater companies. The program began in 2005 and has grown annually, and this year the League of Cincinnati Theatres is considering participation in a program that gives people who haven't seen much theater the chance to experience a play or a musical at no charge. The program is happening more than 50 cities across the United States, including Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. I sure hope it happens here. Info: www.freenightoftheater.net ...
How about an interesting concept for a theater that's not yet come to Cincinnati? New York City's SIGNATURE THEATER COMPANY, a 16-year-old Off Broadway theater, picks one American playwright each season and focuses on his or her work. Last month Signature announced its next four seasons, which will feature plays by Edward Albee, Charles Mee, Suzan-Lori Parks and Tony Kushner. Albee and Kushner are familiar names (Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a classic; his Tony Award winner, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? was a recent hit for New Stage Collective; Kushner wrote the masterful Angels in America, which has never had a professional production locally) — but Mee and Parks are not on the top of anyone's lists of well-known playwrights, although both are topnotch creators whose work is regularly admired (both had pieces at recent Humana Festivals at Actors Theatre in Louisville). Signature also made waves by announcing that every seat for every play during all four seasons will cost $20. This approach has led to tremendous box office success for the theater. It's something worth considering in Cincinnati.
contact rick Pender: rpender(at)citybeat.com
