Jerri Shafer - Page 29

Performed in a cabaret setting with five talented actors and a baby grand! A poignant and compelling musical revue by two-time Tony Award winner William Finn, creator of the groundbreaking musical Falsettos and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

Short North Stage's annual gala celebrated on October 7th, 2016 by starting with a cocktail hour where guests enjoyed a musical journey through the last five years of fabulous theatre with some of the favorite performers. Then the celebration continued on the main stage where they enjoyed an elegant three-course meal, catered by Carfagna's Kitchen, a Columbus favorite for the past 75 years. As an added pleasure, many of the performers joined each table on stage in costume and in character during the dinner. Throughout the evening they could bid on silent auction items with all kinds of great items to bid on including signed posters, a weekend getaway, and a couple of walk-on performances for shows in their upcoming season.

Based on a real event, Looped takes place in the summer of 1965, when an inebriated Tallulah Bankhead needed eight hours to redub - or loop - one line of dialogue for her last movie, Die! Die! My Darling! Though Bankhead's outsized personality dominates the play, the sub-story involves her battle of wills with a film editor named Danny Miller, who has been selected to work that particular sound editing session. It's the last day of post-production on Die! Die! My Darling, one of those schlocky gothic thrillers that allowed former grande dames and sex goddesses of the screen to scrape a living in their later years, or simply pass the time before the cameras until the ultimate final cut. A single line of dialogue requires looping - re-recording to match the film - but Tallulah cannot manage to speak the requisite syllables in the proper order. As she stalls and stutters, expressing infinite scorn for the tedious process, she perfumes the stale air of the studio with snappy one-liners on her favorite subjects, namely her own eccentric behavior and uneven career, and the consoling seductions of booze, drugs, cigarettes and sex. Her audience consists of a beleaguered film editor, Danny who has been corralled into supervising the session because the director skipped town, and a studio technician, who watches from a booth above the studio as Tallulah toys with poor Danny like a haughty, grizzled feline batting around a hapless mouse.

Two wealthy London bachelors each pretend to be a fictitious man called Earnest in order to win over two eligible young ladies, despite the ladies' avowed preference for that name alone - and the interference of the intimidatingly proper Lady Bracknell - in Wilde's 'trivial comedy for serious people.'

Venture back Into the Woods as Warehouse Theatre presents the Tony Award-winning musical classic by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine.

Imagine you're on the set of a late-night talk show with God, who is explaining the Ten Commandments and waxing philosophical on Thomas Jefferson, J.R. Ewing, Kanye West, etc. Assisting with audience questions and a PowerPoint presentation are angels Gabriel and Michael.

The hilarity returns! If you missed it on the Garden Stage in the chill of January 2015, escape the heat of August with this over-the-top comedy by Charles Busch (Die, Mommie, Die and The Divine Sister). An outrageous parody of the campy beach party movies of the 1960s, this revival of the Immersive Theater production reunites the original cast, include Doug Joseph and Nick Hardin. A BENEFIT FOR SHORT NORTH STAGE.

A distinguished politician's youthful indiscretions come to light in 'An Ideal Husband,' Oscar Wilde's sophisticated satire. Sir Robert Chiltern's political career and marriage are put to the test as the true nature of his virtue is revealed. His problem is compounded by his wife's intolerance of the slightest character flaw. Wilde's classic comedy features two of his best characters, the deliciously sly Mrs. Cheveley and the wonderfully witty Lord Goring.

The story of Edison, a young man with leukemia and Robert, an older HIV+ man. Toss in an aging stage star, an eccentric medium, an old-school queen, a ghost, and you get a funny, thought-provoking, unconventional love story. Edison is a handsome young man with leukemia who can only get insurance to cover his chemo if he's HIV+. Robert is an older man, HIV+, and a self-proclaimed 'sex pig' trying to change his life. Each has what the other wants. But what will they do to get it? The comedy is a wonderful new work that blends realism with other-worldly fantasy in a script that's fresh, smart and laced with inside-theater references. POZ has some supremely likeable characters. The script alternates its humor between a warm glow and sharp, laser-like bursts finding the most unlikely path, constantly surprising with the off-ramps, each of them shockingly funny and breathtakingly beautiful. It's funny, it's tender, and it rings with truth. It is a love story with people we care about. If there's such a thing as farce with a heart, then POZ is it.

Appalachia and the Bard collide in a night of live music and theatre. Sometimes dark tragedy, sometimes uproarious comedy, 'The Winter's Tale' sets the story of one of Shakespeare's more disparate and modern works, at the turn of the 19th & 20th century, between the coal mining country of Eastern Kentucky and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. Inspired in part by the album 'Jean Ritchie & Doc Watson at Folk City' and heavily flavored with traditional mountain and American folk music performed by the cast, the play will celebrate the culture and the music of Appalachia, a region with strong cultural, musical and linguistic ties to Shakespeare's England, with a tragedy and joy that is uniquely and entertainingly American.

Join the Westerville Parks and Recreation Civic Theatre as they take the stage this July to perform Disney's 'The Little Mermaid.' This captivating musical is sure to be fun for the whole family!

Like so many girls her age, little Dorothy Gale of Kansas dreams of what lies over the rainbow. One day a twister hits her farm and carries her away over the rainbow to another world. Come join Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tinman, the Cowardly Lion and Toto as they travel the universe of Dorothy's imagination. You do not want to miss this special engagement! This family fun show promises to have something for everyone!

The Grandview Carriage Place Recreation Community Theatre presented 'Guys and Dolls' July 15 thru 17th. The cast of all ages and wonderful talents took the audience back in time to a simpler and more glorious era.

A musical perfect for the whole family, Seussical takes us into the world of Dr. Seuss, where we revisit beloved characters including The Cat in the Hat, Horton the Elephant, Gertrude McFuzz, Lazy Mayzie, and JoJo. The Cat in the Hat guides us into The Jungle of Nool where we see Horton, the kind hearted elephant who discovers a speck of dust containing Whoville. He meets JoJo, a Who child sent to military school for thinking too many 'thinks.'Horton decides he must protect the speck of dust on a nearby clover, while at the same time protecting an abandoned egg left to his care by the lazy Mayzie la Bird. Horton tries to convince the other animals in The Jungle of the existence of the Whos, but he is ridiculed and put on trial for insanity. Only his loyal neighbor,Gertrude McFuzz, never loses faith in him. Eventually, the two fall in love. Now one of the most widely produced musicals in the country, Seussical weaves a story of friendship, loyalty and love. Despite all odds, Horton and Gertrude band together to save the Whos, free Horton, and restore peace and unity to the Jungle of Nool. Charming Seussical teaches us the power of being unique, and the importance of fighting for your beliefs.

It's 1955, and into a square little town in a square little state rides a guitar-playing roustabout who changes everything and everyone he meets in this hip-swiveling, lip-curling musical fantasy that'll have you jumpin' out of your blue suede shoes with such classics as 'Heartbreak Hotel,' 'Jailhouse Rock,' and 'Don't Be Cruel.'

An outrageous musical comedy that combines musical theater's current 'Mormon-mania' and everyone's love of the Queen of the Musicals herself, Ethel Merman. Mormon missionaries, Aaron and Jacob, on a two-year stint to convert more Latter Day Saints, ring a buzzer that says, 'E.M. Welcome.'

Winner of three TONY Awards, three Outer Critic's Circle Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and two Obie Awards, Urinetown is a hilarious musical satire of the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, municipal politics and musical theatre itself! Hilariously funny and touchingly honest, Urinetown provides a fresh perspective of one of America's greatest art forms.

South Pacific is a musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The plot centers on an American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II, who falls in love with a middle-aged expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children. A secondary romance, between a U.S. lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman, explores his fears of the social consequences should he marry his Asian sweetheart. The issue of racial prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, most controversially in the lieutenant's song, 'You've Got to Be Carefully Taught'. Supporting characters, including a comic petty officer and the Tonkinese girl's mother, help to tie the stories together.

Seventeen local Columbus Theater's gathered on Monday June 27th, 2016 to perform and support a great cause-Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Along with production numbers from favorite companies the evening also featured a silent auction of Playbill merchandise and signed Broadway memorabilia from this Broadway season.

Based on the classic swashbuckling tale of vengeance and redemption, The Countess of Monte Cristo tells the story of a young woman betrayed in the name of greed and spite by people she trusted who transforms herself into an agent of self-styled justice and returns to the glitter and intrigue of upper-class Paris twenty years later to carry out her revenge.