Archive: Arts & Entertainment

Broadway is setting up shop at the Hangar theatre this summer.  Casting for the 38th season of the Central New York theatre features an exciting array of talent from the Great White Way.  Broadway luminaries Andréa Burns, Robert Cuccioli, Janet Dacal, Chris Hoch, Dee Hoty, Michael McCormick, and Emily Skinner will all trod the boards in Ithaca this summer as part of the five show season.

Michael McCormick (Elf, Curtains, Kiss of the Spider Woman), Janet Dacal (Wonderland, In the Heights) and the Tony nominated Emily Skinner (Side Show, Billy Elliott and the Hangar’s Dirty Blonde) will headline the season opener, Ken Ludwig’s knock-down, drag it out farce, Lend Me A Tenor (June 21-July 7).  The rest of the cast includes Daniel Berlingeri, Lindsay Clemmons, Eddie Vona, and Judy Levitt.  Hangar Artistic Director Peter Flynn will direct.

Honoring the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, the Hangar presents the Tony Award winning musical Titanic, featuring several original Broadway cast members including Alma Cuervo, William Youmans, and Drew McVety.  With a book by Peter Stone and music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, original cast member Don Stephenson, directs the new staging that uses a pared down cast of 20 to tell the epic story. Choreography is by Liza Gennaro (Once Upon a Mattress, The Most Happy Fella).  The Hangar’s production of Titanic also boasts the original Broadway musical director and conductor Kevin Stites.

Additional cast members include Christianne Tisdale (On a Clear Day) as Alice Beane, Phillip Hoffman (Into the Woods, Hangar’s Ever So Humble) as Edgar Beane, Joneil Joplin as Captain Smith and Tony Award nominee Robert Cuccioli (Jekyll & Hyde) as Andrews. Rounding out the cast is Will Boyajian, Sarah Charles, Xander Chauncey, Katie Drinkard, Jeremy Ellison Gladstone, Elizabeth Hake, Greg Kamp, John Langley, Matt Madden, Christian Palmer, Noah Plomgren, Ariella Serur, and David Studwell.

Three-time Tony nominee Dee Hoty (The Will Rogers Follies, Footloose) will star in Mark Hampton and Mary Louise Wilson’s one woman comic tour-de-force Full Gallop, based on the life of Diana Vreeland who stood at the center of American style for five decades. In Full Gallop, Vreeland has been fired from Vogue magazine and is throwing a spontaneous dinner party, hoping that a well-heeled friend will bankroll her latest venture.  The sophisticated comedy will play from August 2-August 11 and is directed by the Hangar’s Artistic Director Peter Flynn (Ever So Humble, Man of La Mancha).

The Pulitzer Prize winning musical Next to Normal makes its area premiere at the Hangar (August 16-September 1).  Andréa Burns (In the Heights, Hangar’s Ever So Humble) and Chris Hoch (La Cage Aux Folles, Shrek the Musical, Spamalot) star in this groundbreaking musical with a Tony Award winning score by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt.  Next to Normal concerns a family in crisis, trying to take care of each other in the face of a monumental challenge, a mother’s deteriorating mental state.  With a heart-stopping contemporary score, Next to Normal pushes the boundaries of musical theatre.  Directed by Tracy Brigden, the cast also features Bryan Terrell Clark, Adam Fontana, Alison McCarten, and Noah Plomgren.

From the Oscar winning screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird to the Pulitzer Prize winning play, The Man from Atlanta, Horton Foote is an American literary treasure.  The Hangar closes the 2012 season with what is arguably his masterpiece, The Trip to Bountiful (September 13-September 22).  Starring Hangar favorite Susannah Berryman as Carrie Watts, The Trip to Bountiful also features Eric T. Miller (Hangar’s Ever So Humble, Labyrinth Theatre’s Sweet Storm), Dane C. Cruz (Hangar’s Of Mice and Men), Oberon K.A. Adjepong (Ruined) and Kelly McAndrew (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof).  Additional cast members include Cristina Gatti and Vincent Hannam.

Peter Flynn, Artistic Director of the Hangar, states “The 2012 season is an exploration of our American life onstage: how we have come together and evolved our way of living and thinking because of national events and trends explored in these significant plays and musicals.  It is also a reinvigoration of the American story, whether a musical chronicle of one of the most noteworthy events of the twentieth century, the advent of the screwball comedy, or how we relate to our friends and family in the twenty-first century - the 2012 season takes a cohesive look at how we live as Americans.” 

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