CLOC 2012 SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT
(SUBJECT TO CHANGE PENDING LICENSING)
College Light Opera Company producers Robert and Ursula Haslun are pleased to announce
the 44th CLOC summer season repertoire.
(All performances are at 8:oo p.m. with Thursday matinees at 2:00 p.m.)
June 26-30: Gilbert and Sullivan’'s Ruddigore
The 8th operetta in the G&S canon, Ruddigore is a spoof of Victorian melodrama. It followed the hugely successful Mikado and has always been wrongfully overshadowed by that piece. The plot is funny, relevant, and tuneful.
Peopled by a chorus of ditzy professional bridesmaids, fashionable bucks and blades, and a picture gallery of ghostly ancestors who come alive on stage and leave their frames, Ruddigore is a G&S classic in a CLOC production that should not be missed.
This CLOC production will use the original music and libretto from the opening night at the Savoy Theatre. This will restore much of the music and dialogue removed in the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company’s 1923 revival, the version generally used today by CLOC and other G&S companies. There is a cd recording available CDJAY2 1340(1) with the New Sadlers Wells Opera.
July 3-7: Meredith Willson’'s The Music Man
“76 Trombones Lead the Big Parade” in CLOC’s revival about the faker Harold Hill who cons small towns on the need for children’s bands and absconds with the money. In River City, Iowa, however, he is foiled when he falls in love with Marian, the town librarian.
July 10-14: Jerome Kern’'s Sally
CLOC continues its exploration of the marvelous Kern musicals of the 1920s. With a delightful and funny book by Guy Bolton, Sally tells the story of a group of poor girls arriving in New York to make careers in show business. As is still the case, they wind up working in restaurants with Sally serving as a dishwasher at the Greenwich Village Inn. A party is booked, the leading ballerina backs out of the entertainment at the last minute. Sally is quietly substituted. She is a triumph, of course, and is recruited into the Ziegfield Follies. Along the way she meets and falls in love with Blair and the story ends with them and two other couples getting married at “The Church Around the Corner.”
Some of Kern’s great tunes include “Look for the Silver Lining,”,The Church Around the Corner,” ”The Lorelei,” “Wild Rose,” and “You Can’t Keep a Good Girl Down.”
Sally was the biggest Broadway hit of 1920 and went on to hold the box office sales record for the entire decade.
July 17-21: Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story
Leonard Berstein’s hauntingly beautiful retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story in a New York City setting. The well-loved score includes “Maria,” “America,” “Tonight, Tonight,” “Gee, Officer Krupke,” “I Feel Pretty,” and “Somewhere There’s A Place For Us.”
July 24-28: Sigmund Romberg’'s The Student Prince
CLOC returns to the world of American operetta with this classic 1924 operetta last seen at Highfield Theatre in 2001. The Student Prince tells the story of a young protected prince sent off to university at Heidelberg. He joins in fraternity life there and falls in love with the commoner, Kathy. The tale blazes along with one great Romberg song after another until the death of his father brings the Prince back to reality and he forsakes student life and his beloved Kathy to return to his new life.
Songs include “Serenade,” “The Drinking Chorus”, “Deep in My Heart,” “Golden Days,” and the traditional “Gaudeamus Igitur.”
The Student Prince was the longest-running Broadway show of the 1920s.
July 31-August 4: Cole Porter’'s Anything Goes
Cole Porter and P.G. Wodehouse wrote this hilarious and tuneful romp set on the ocean liner S.S. American during an Atlantic crossing. Porter’s hits include “You’re the Top,” ”It’s Delovely,” “I Get A Kick Out of You, “Anything Goes,” and “All Through the Night.”
August 7-11: Stein, Bock, and Harnick’'s Fiddler on the Roof
This Broadway gem of 1964 has everything going for it – a gripping story and a great score in which every tune is a famous hit! Among the many memorable numbers are “Tradition,” “Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Match,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” and “Far From the Home I Love.”
August 14-18: Leonard Bernstein’'s Candide
Based on Voltaire’s famous story, Bernstein’s glittering 1956 Broadway musical debunks the platitude that “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”
The plot tells the tale of the trials and tribulations of the young lovers, Candide and Cunegonde, as they struggle with the various obstacles put in their way and keeping them apart until their final triumph and reunion.
Songs include “Oh Happy We,” “Make Our Garden Grow,” “It Must Be So.,” “I am Easily Assimilated,” and “Glitter and Be Gay.”
August 21-25: The Drowsy Chaperone
With great music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison and a hilarious book by Bob Martin and Don McKellor, CLOC premiere’s this wonderful Broadway hit from the 2006 season. It garnered 5 Tony Awards and 6 Drama Desk Awards including Best Musical. The show is, in 2012, currently the most produced recent Broadway musical in the United States.
The story centers on a die-hard musical theatre fan who plays his favorite cast album on his turntable and the musical itself bursts to life in his living room telling the rambunctious tale of a brazen Broadway starlet trying to find and keep her true love. The Drowsy Chaperone is an homage to American musicals and an examination through music and comedy of the effect musicals have on all of us who adore them.
