Muhlenberg Summer Music Theatre : The 25th Season Of Broadway At Home In The Lehigh Valley Presents CANDIDE
Muhlenberg Summer Music Theatre (SMT) continues its 25th anniversary season with the production of CANDIDE, Leonard Bernstein’s enormously funny and widely irreverent musical that explores the “best of all possible worlds.”Friday, July 1, 2005 01:59 PM
Based on Voltaire’s 1759 novelette of comic and philosophical genius, Candide takes a satirical look at life through the minds of its characters as they move through a world of violence, greed, war, and hatred. It tells the story of Candide, the illegitimate nephew of a German baron who falls in love with the baron’s young daughter and is promptly expelled from the castle, promulgating him into outrageous and fast-paced adventures. A series of catastrophic events seem to plague the title character as fate refuses to allow the gentle man to rest, yet he remains ceaselessly optimistic throughout his travails until he finally embarks upon the lesson to “cultivate his own garden.” A witty storyline mixed with Bernstein’s charming score makes Candide a hilarious and thought-provoking amalgam of opera and the classic Broadway musical.
Winner of 5 Tony Awards in 1974, including Best Musical Book and Best Director of a Musical for Hal Prince, Candide first opened on Broadway in 1956. It pays tribute to the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, featuring “O Happy We,” “Make Our Garden Grow,” and “The Best of All Possible Worlds.” Candide has achieved canonical status in the realm of musical theatre and has become a favorite in the repertoire of opera houses and theatre companies, often cited as one of the best stage musicals to come out of the 20 th century. The intelligence and fun of the storyline and music are matched by the outwardly merry but ultimately satirical appearance of the colorful costumes and eye-popping sets which complete the production that remains as relevant today as it did in its original form of Voltaire’s commentary on 18 th century optimism.
SMT’s production of Candide will be directed by James Alexander Bond, whose credits include numerous productions Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, internationally, and regionally, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor for the Pearl Theatre Company in New York and Dracula for Birmingham (UK) Hippo-drome, along with his rock musical ROCKSHOW which is currently running in New York City. Also on board the Candide team are Curtis Dretsch as scenic designer and Jeremy Slavin as musical director, two of the founding artistic directors of the Summer Music Theatre program along with department head Charles Richter. Joining the summer design team is guest artist Liz Covey (Last Night of Ballyhoo) as costume designer for Candide.
Candide contains the talents of some familiar leading players who return to the SMT stage. Leah Elizabeth Goldstein , featured in SMT’ s Made in America, Godspell and The Fantasticks , will play Paquette in Candide with Jeffrey Simno as Voltaire/Pangloss, also featured in SMT’s The Fantasticks and Once Upon a Time in New Jersey. Playing the title character of Candide is David Torsiello, a familiar face to the Muhlenberg stage who has performed in the SMT productions of The Music Man, Crazy for You, Damn Yankees, and A Chorus Line, and Sarah Hutchison makes her SMT debut as Cunegonde. The brilliance of Bernstein’s score first excited sold-out audiences on the Muhlenberg summer stage in the inaugural season of 1981, and this year it returns to celebrate SMT’s 25 th anniversary.
Candide opens July 13 and runs through July 31 in the Empie Theatre of the Baker Center for the Arts. Following the production of Candide is the Lehigh Valley premiere of My Way: A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra, the show that brings the Sinatra mystique to life through four voices and a jazz trio, running from July 27 to August 14 in the Baker Theatre of the Trexler Pavilion for Theatre and Dance. A romantic and energetic review of 58 songs staged in a smoky nightclub, My Way celebrates the phenomenal career of this stage and film entertainer and joyfully reproduces some of the best popular music of the last 60 years: “ I Only Have Eyes for You,” “Let's Face the Music and Dance,” “One for My Baby,” “My Kind of Town,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and “That's Life.” Performances of both Candide and My Way occur Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm with special family nights on Sundays at 8pm for the first two weeks of the production runs. Adult tickets are $30, senior tickets $27, and youth (under 17) tickets $17. Subscription, preview and group discounts are available. For more information and tickets visit the Summer Music Theatre website at www.summerbroadway.org or call the Muhlenberg box office at 484-664-3333.
