[NEohioPAL] Lucky Stiff opens at The Hudson Players This Weekend!

Dana Herro danaherro at gmail.com
Thu Feb 6 13:24:45 PST 2014


Ahrens and Flaherty Musical Alive on Hudson Stage



 The Hudson Players are busy preparing to open their winter musical, *Lucky
Stiff*, which opens Friday, February 7, 2014.  Written by Lynn Ahrens and
Stephen Flaherty, the foremost theatrical songwriting team of their
generation and winners of Broadway's triple crown, this musical farce is
based off of the 1983 novel *The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte
Carlo* by Michael
Butterworth <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Butterworth>. It was created
and performed at Playwrights
Horizons<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playwrights_Horizons>
off-Broadway <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-Broadway> in 1988, and won
the Richard Rodgers Award for that year. It also won the Helen Hayes Award
for Best Musical.

            The musical was born from Lynn Ahrens finding Buttersworth's
novel at a New York Public Library sale.  She thought it was zany and off
the wall and showed it to Flaherty, who thought it would make an incredible
farce but never really considered making it into a musical.  As the team
progressed in their thought processes, music became a part of the story and
after Buttersworth heard a few of the early demos, he granted the artistic
duo the rights to the novel, although he passed away before the show was
completed.

            During the show's development process, Ahrens and Flaherty
shared parts of it at the Dramatists Guild for audiences that included
other musical theater composers, including Stephen
Sondheim<http://www.sfgate.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=music&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Stephen+Sondheim%22>
.  "Sondheim told us the show should be fun and silly, like an Ealing
Studios comedy," Ahrens says. "We hadn't thought of that, and he was right.
This show makes you laugh for the sake of laughing, with a little romance
thrown in," Ahrens says. The original concept for the show was witty and
clever but in reality the pair found that it needed to be crazier and
quirky.  Beautiful ballads were swapped out for comedic ones and the show
took on a new life with a constant laugh track.  Ahrens has commented on
the show, "People crave that. I think that's why *Lucky Stiff* stuck around
and is now being made into a movie starring Jason Alexander and Dennis
Farina. People want to have a good time and enjoy themselves. *Lucky
Stiff*is that kind of show."

            The show is directed by Rich Jagunic, who has been directing
for The Hudson Players for over 20 years with musical direction by Debra
Burkhart.  Jagunic's other directorial credits with The Hudson Players
include *Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, The Drowsy Chaperone
*and *A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum*.  The talented and
hilarious cast includes Brittany Smile, Wendy Schanz, Gary Maher, Michael
Guffey, Kathy Steiner, Holly Reimer, Brian Keith, Brian Pichola, Sonny
Sonnhalter and Mark Moore.
            *Lucky *Stiff show dates are February 7, 8, 14, 15, 21, 22, 28,
and March 1 at 8:00pm and February 23 at 2:00pm.  Tickets may be purchased
either by phone (330-655-8522) or via the web at www.HudsonPlayers.com.  Please
email any questions to info at hudsonplayers.com.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20140206/32c3e559/attachment.htm>


More information about the NEohioPAL mailing list