The Tony Award-honored resident theatre is devoted to new musicals, revisions and revival of classics. Its 2007 season of still-developing new works at the Norma Terris Theatre will be announced at a later date.
Executive director Michael P. Price announced the new Opera House season on Nov. 15. It will launch April 20, 2007, with a revival of Singin' in the Rain, the stage version of the classic M-G-M movie musical. It plays to July 1.
Betty Comden and Adolph Green adapted their own screenplay for the stage. The film's songs, by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, are also retained (with at least one interpolation, "What's Wrong With Me?," for the ditzy platinum blonde star Lina Lamont). The stage version, seen on Broadway in 1985, and in London before that, includes a "real" rainstorm on stage — and it'll rain at Goodspeed, too. The show has been popular in regional theatres.
Ray Roderick (Goodspeed Musicals' Double Trouble) will direct Singin' in the Rain.
High Button Shoes, the summer production at the Goodspeed Opera House, July 13-Sept. 22, "is a peek back at the Model T era as the stage bursts with bathing beauties and fraternity brothers, Keystone Kops chasing madcap robbers — and even a dancing gorilla," according to Goodspeed. "This lively and lovable musical will leave you laughing as a fast-talking conman returns to his old hometown in hopes of striking it rich." The 1947 score by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn includes "Papa Won't You Dance With Me," "I Still Get Jealous" and "You're My Girl." The libretto is by Stephen Longstreet, based on the novel "The Sisters Liked Them Handsome."
The original Broadway production was directed by George Abbott and choreographed by Jerome Robbins. A new generation learned about the show in the 1980s when portions of it were re-created for Jerome Robbins' Broadway in 1989.
Goodspeed's High Button Shoes will be directed by Greg Ganakas (Goodspeed's Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Babes In Arms, Brigadoon; Long Wharf Theatre's The Times).
1776, the Peter Stone-Sherman Edwards musical about the months leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, will run Sept. 28-Dec. 2. The Best Musical Tony Award-winning show — generally considered to have one of the best-written librettos in American musical theatre — features John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers arguing and yearning for personal and political goals. Edwards penned music and lyrics and Stone is the librettist.
Gary Griffin (Broadway's The Color Purple and The Apple Tree) will direct.
Advance season subscriptions are now on sale through the box office at (860) 873-8668 or at www.goodspeed.org.
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Dedicated to the preservation and advancement of musical theatre, Goodspeed Musicals produces three musicals each season at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, CT, and an additional three at The Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, CT., which was opened in 1984 for the development of new musicals. The only regional theatre to receive two Tony Awards (for outstanding achievement), Goodspeed also maintains The Scherer Library of Musical Theatre and The Max Showalter Center for Education in the Musical Theater.
