Our 2000-2001 Season

By Willy Russell

August 11, 12, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26

Frank is a tutor of English literature at a backwater university in Northern England, whose disillusioned outlook on life has driven him to drink and to bury himself in his books. Into his life bursts Rita, a forthright 26-year-old hairdresser hungry for an education. Rita's native shrewdness, humor, and refusal to accept secondhand opinions win over the reticent Frank. As Rita learns who she is and what she can be, Frank learns to believe in himself once again. A charming, passionate and warmly funny story of an unusual and inspired relationship. A hit movie with Michael Caine and Julie Walters.

By Joseph Kesselring

February 9, 10, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24

This famous comedy has been a smash hit for fifty years, and the colorful members of the Brewster family are back to entertain us again! The charming and innocent ladies, Abby and Martha Brewster, populate their cellar with the remains of socially and religiously "acceptable" roomers poisoned by elderberry wine laced with arsenic. Brother Teddy thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt, charging up San Juan Hill and inspecting the Panama Canal. Older brother Jonathan, to escape the law, has had his face surgically redone, resulting in an uncanny resemblance to Boris Karloff. Younger brother Mortimer, an unhappy theater critic, is caught in the middle when Jonathan returns on the lam and starts adding to the body count. Add a couple of local policemen, the minister's daughter next door, and the befuddled director of Happy Dale, the local rest home, and you have a recipe for a delightful evening!

By Tom Dudzick
November 3, 4, 10, 11, 16, 17, 18

Andy has a sweet Catholic mother, a grouchy Catholic father and a severely retarded younger brother. When he reluctantly brings home his Jewish atheist fiancée to meet the folks on Christmas Eve, his worst fears about family blow-ups are realized. But right in the middle of the explosion, brother Mickey, whose entire vocabulary has been limited to "oh boy" and "wow," suddenly says "Greetings" and sends us on a wildly hilarious exploration into the nature of reality. Mickey has loaned his body to an ancient, wise and witty spirit who is determined to heal the family's wounds and bring them together. A delightful holiday treat about love, faith, and miracles.

Book by Neil Simon
Lyrics by Dorothy Fields
Music by Cy Coleman

May 4, 5, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19
Sunday, May 20 at 2:00 p.m.

Sweet Charity is a tender, poignant, funny look at the misadventures of one Charity Hope Valentine. A "lady of the evening" who always gives her heart (and her earnings) to the wrong man, Charity laughs and cries her way through romances with the "animal magnetism" hero, the "ultra-chic continental" hero, and lastly the "impossible-to-believe-but-he's-better-than-nothing" hero. Her world is the all too real world of Times Square. and the people who pass through it are as deceptively charming as ever swept across any stage. Neil Simon and composers Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields delightfully capture the rhythms and sounds of New York.