Steve Braddock has been bringing profession- al children’s theater to town for a decade, usu- ally with hit shows from the children’s circuit, like Joan Cushing’s Miss Nelson is Missing and the madcap surreality of Go, Dog, Go. In January the troupe will mount a one-week fund raiser, Jason Robert Brown’s 13, featur- ing actors who appeared much younger in the May-June shows. The title of this year’s May- June production will be announced in the fall. And The Media Unit (327 Montgomery
St.; 478-UNIT), the award-winning teen group coached by Walt Shepperd, has a permanent home next to the old Carnegie Library, but in keeping with street theater tradition can show up anywhere. The gang’s most recent production, Angels with Broken Wings: If We Had Peace, has just completed a run of 15 performances in city parks and recreation centers.
VIVE LE DIFFERENCE Entering its 25th year, and now under the
direction of Donna Stuccio, Armory Square Players continues with script-in-hand produc- tions of new plays, mostly by local authors, usually on the third Sunday of the month at 1 p.m., on Sept. 26, Oct. 24, Dec. 12, Jan. 23, Feb. 13, March 27 and April 17. Once peripa- tetic, the group is now settled at Jazz Central, 441 E. Washington St. The Dec. 12 event will be the second year of holiday-themed shorts by group playwrights and offered for the Friends of Dorothy. The March 27 ses- sion will feature the winning plays written by Syracuse University students. Open Hand Theatre (476-0466) holds
court at the storybook castle Victorian man- sion known as the International Mask and Puppet Museum, 518 Prospect Ave., just off North Salina Street, and remains the most photogenic of all local theatrical venues. Although Geoff Navias and Leslie Archer have succeeded in recent years in getting the Open Hand brand more widely recognized, in collaborations with Syracuse Symphony and Syracuse Opera, there is still always something happening at the castle. The World of Puppets for youthful audiences on the first two Saturdays of the month at 11 a.m. begins with Michael Graham’s Jack & the Beanstalk (Oct. 2), followed by Jim “Nappy Napolitano’s Father Goose Tales (Oct. 9), Frog Town Puppets’ The Legend of Banana Kid (Nov. 6), Crab Grass Puppet Theatre’s Anansi (Nov. 11), Open Hand’s own Grand-
father Frost’s Stories of Russia (Dec. 4), and The Puppet People’s A Christmas Carol (Dec. 11). The Well-Aged Words Adult Storytelling Series in Saturday evenings begins with Andy Offutt Irwin (Nov. 13). This year’s production if Giancarlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors (Dec. 3, 4, 10-12, 17, 18), a holiday favorite for more than a decade, will be staged at the English Lutheran Church on the corner of James and Townsend streets. Six years after opening its doors, The Red-
house (201 S. West St.; 425-0405) is increas- ingly identified as a music or comedy venue, a movie house or an art gallery. For artistic director Laura Austin, however, an actress and dancer, live theater remains close to her heart. Two of this season’s three shows draw from other innovative upstate companies, while the third is a from-the-ground original production of an off-Broadway hit. Christmas with the Calamari Sisters (Nov. 5-7, 12-14) is hailed as a “world premiere,” but draws on a popular series featuring the “larger than life” Delphine and Carmella (actors’ names not given), whose comedy routines have had extended runs at Rochester’s Downstairs Cabaret Theatre. Limited cabaret seating will allow audience members to participate and taste what the “girls” (if that’s what they are) will be cooking up. Playwright Stephen Svoboda will direct his own Odysseus D.O.A. (Jan. 21-23, 27-29), billed as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets Angels in America through the mind of Homer.” Odys- seus D.O.A., which promises to be “poetic, hilarious and heartfelt,” is a co-production with the Adirondack Lakes Performing Arts Center in Blue Mountain Lake. Brooklyn- based director Oliver Butler, remembered for cutting-edge work here by the Debate Society, will travel to Syracuse for a revival of Melissa Jams Gibson’s [sic] (April 1-3, 8, 9), a big off-Broadway hit from 2001. The title [sic], a copyeditor’s bugaboo, depicts three twen- tysomethings in a world of quicksand needs and fickle urges. Babette is a frustrated editor, Theo a blocked, classically trained composer, and Frank a tongue-tied auctioneer.
LIFE’S A NICHE Now in its 51st year, Jack and Doris
Skillman’s venerable company Onondaga Hillplayers (468-5472, 492-1221) still offers the best buy for comedy and dinner. This year brings a reprise of the company’s 2002 hit, Don’t Dress for Dinner (Oct. 29-31, Nov. 5-7)
by the incomparable farceur Mario Camoletti. The French title for this confection is Pajamas for Six. Camoletti’s comedies keep coming back. His Boeing, Boeing, of which Don’t Dress is a sequel, did great business in New York City three years ago. Tank Steingraber leads a cast of familiar faces with Karen Alex- ander, John Seavers and Mary Kate Bragger for performances at The Links at Sunset Ridge in Marcellus. The oldest continuing theater of any kind
in the area and still going strong in its 68th year, the Baldwinsville Theatre Guild (at the First Presbyterian Church Education Center, 64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville; 877- 4183) will take on one of the most ambitious productions of the year: Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis’ dark spoof of megamusicals, Urinetown (March 11, 12, 18-20, 25, 26). Company head Deb Taylor and Heather Jensen will co-direct. The season opens with Agatha Christie’s venerable courtroom drama, Witness for the Prosecution (Oct. 22, 23, 29, 30, Nov. 5-7). John LaCasse, who starred in a production five yeas ago for the now-defunct Vineyard troupe, will direct. In Anne Pié’s At First Sight (June 3, 4, 10-12, 17, 18), an area premiere, 51-year-old Julia Goldman is swept off her feet in a posh Los Angeles hotel, disconcerting her flamboyant sister and exacerbating the sibling rivalry of her squab- bling children. Most people know Ronnie Bell’s Syracuse
Shakespeare Festival (443-8781, 476-1835) for the free performances each August at Thornden Park, but the company also goes inside for Shakespeare-Under-a-Roof. Bell expects to give us Antony and Cleopatra in February at the New Times Theater, and the farcical sendup The Complete Works of Wil- liam Shakespeare (Abridged) in April, tenta- tively slated for the theater space on the first floor of the Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St. The company also fields the Avon Repertory Theatre (ART), a troupe of six actors per- forming 55-minute abridged versions of the classics in classrooms, plus vacation theater camps for kids in the spring (April 18-22) and summer (July 11-15). The ACME Mystery Company (at
Spaghetti Warehouse, 689 N. Clinton St.; reservations: 475-1807; company business: 622-2665) continues to provide more than 100 performances of its special brand of interac- tive mystery dinner theater, with its flagship shows on Thursdays at 6:45 p.m. Next on the boards: My Dead Lady (Sept. 16, 23, 30, Oct. 7, 14, 21, 28, Nov. 4, 11). The company also
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travels to additional venues such as Beard- slee Castle in Little Falls, Yesterday’s Royal in Sylvan Beach and Greek Peak Mountain Resort. New works from a variety of authors for the new season include Fiddler on the Loose, The Saint Patrick’s Day Massacre, Polka Death and Oklahomocide. Also at the Spaghetti Warehouse, but on
Saturdays at 12:30 p.m., isMagic Circle Children’s Theatre (449-3823), now in its 14th year. Interactive retellings of classic fairy tales invite participation from youthful audi- ences for only $5. Director Hope Mancini will launch Alice in Wonderland (Sept. 25, Oct. 9, 16, 23, 30, Nov. 6, 13, 20, 27, Dec. 4, 11, 18), with a Wednesday show for the holidays on Dec. 29. Double-casting means either Harper Carroll or Mya Dwyer for Alice, Binaifer Dabu or Tracy Randall as the Red Queen, David Minikheim or Navzad Dabu as the White Rabbit, but company founder Meredith Mancini goes solo as the Mad Hatter. A pro- duction for the new year will be announced later in the fall. Several companies will not be around this
season.Wit’s End Players (345-8001), David Witanowski’s much-lauded company, is on temporary hiatus but expects to return to the boards in fall 2011. Simply New Theatre (558-9194), John Nara’s company, and a dominant player at the Syracuse New Times Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) Awards in recent years, faces an uncertain future with the artistic director’s possible relocation out of the area. And the Paul Robeson Perform- ing Arts Company’s (805 E. Genesee St.; 442-2727) widely publicized changes in the company’s relationship with Syracuse Uni- versity have suggested a cloudy future for productions this season. Widowed but unbowed, however, Pat
Lotito and her Salt City Center for the Per- forming Arts (475-9749) will soldier on into the new season. She plans to run Master Class (Nov. 5, 6, 12, 13), Terrence McNally’s drama with Cathleen O’Brien as opera star Maria Callas, to be directed by Frank Fiumano at the Mulroy Civc Center’s Carrier Theater. At the Civic Center’s Crouse-Hinds Theater will be another run of Jesus Christ Superstar (April 22, 23). And there will be a revival of what has become the most enduring of her original musicals, Alice in Wanderland (June 3, 4, 10, 11) at the New Times Theater, with members of the original cast, for whom the music was composed, Frank Fiumano, Bill Molesky and Tank Steingraber, returning to their roles. o
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