The two-time Tony Award-honored company's 49th season will launch April 20-July 1, 2012, with the brassy Mame (1966), based on the episodic Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee play Auntie Mame, about the hedonistic eccentric aunt of a young orphan. Jerry Herman wrote the show's life-embracing songs, including "Open a New Window," "It's Today" and "If He Walked Into My Life." The source material for the play and musical is the Patrick Dennis novel "Auntie Mame." (Lawrence & Lee wrote the libretto.)
Mame will be directed by Ray Roderick (Goodspeed's Hello! My Baby, My One And Only, Singin' in the Rain and 42nd Street) and choreographed by Vince Pesce (associate choreographer of Broadway's Anything Goes, The Pajama Game, Wonderful Town and Little Shop of Horrors).
Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel (1945), the tale of a the chemistry between a carnival barker named Billy Bigelow and a millworker name Julie Jordan, asking answerable questions about the nature of life and tidal pull between men and women, will run July 13-Sept. 23, 2012. The score by composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II includes "What's the Use of Wondrin'," "Soliloquy," "June Is Bustin' Out All Over," "You'll Never Walk Alone" and more. Hammerstein penned the book, borrowing from the play Liliom.
Carousel will be directed by Rob Ruggiero (Broadway's High and Looped and Goodspeed's Show Boat, Camelot and 1776) and choreographed by Parker Esse (associate choreographer of Broadway's Finian's Rainbow and A Tale of Two Cities).
The fall musical at Goodspeed Opera House will play Oct. 5-Dec. 9, 2012. For Goodspeed subscription information, call (860) 873-8668 or visit 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 additional productions at The Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, CT, "which was opened in 1984 for the development of new musicals."
Goodspeed is the first regional theatre to receive two Tony Awards for outstanding achievement. The company maintains The Scherer Library of Musical Theatre and The Max Showalter Center for Education in Musical Theatre.
