Welcome to Falsettoland! Where lovers come and go, and love is utterly blind. Rep Stage in Columbia closes its final season with a poignant and superb production of Falsettos. With Music and Lyrics by William Finn and Book by William Finn and James Lapine such a prolific piece of theater can remind you of the importance of love and friendship. You can clearly sense the passion and expertise that Director and Choreographer Joseph W.
What matters most is the music you hear in your head. And as
singing is a kind of dreaming in public, you’ll want to hear the beautiful
music that is being made by Rep Stage as they open their 2019/2020 season with Souvenir,
a fantasia on the life of Florence Foster Jenkins written by Stephen Temperley.
Directed by Joseph W. Ritsch, this delectable play in memory explores the musical
stage life of Florence Foster Jenkins through the vibrant lens of her pianist,
“The history of the world, my love, is those below serving those up above.” The daunting lyrics of Stephen Sondheim seem to echo through our world at present, where at the top are seated those privileged few making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo, and what better way to exemplify this than to take one of Sondheim’s darker musical classics and spin it on its head in a modern vent? Rep Stage is giving you Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street with this concept firmly in mind.
We are all waiting for the rebirth of wonder. We’re waiting for it in our relationships, in our lives, in our work, in our art, in the theatre. But perhaps instead of waiting we should be doing. Instead of waiting to witness the miracle we should be the miracle. And Rep Stage kicks off the opening of their 25th season by doing just that. Presenting the story of wonder: the woman who can have it all,
Silence is not beautiful. Understudies are not bitter. Silence is a failure of words; silence is defeat. And understudies are real actors that are failed to be recognized in light of a big name draw to a Broadway show. This riveting and uproarious concept, albeit completely true, is wrapped up in Everyman Theatre’s production of Theresa Rebeck’s The Understudy. Directed by Joseph W. Ritsch, this exciting dramadey is more than just a metaplay about real life actors and Kafka.