The house lights flash and go down. Suddenly, the curtain rises, and the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Elton John, Richard Rodgers, Andrew Lippa, Irving Berlin, Harold Rome, Jerome Kern, James Van Heusen, Leonard Bernstein, Frank Loesser, Stephen Sondheim, Jule Styne, Arthur Schwartz, George Gershwin, or one of the other talented musical or film composers fills the renovated movie house. The audience is ready to “rock”—to a cornucopia of songs from Broadway shows or film. The Bristol Riverside Theatre (BRT) presents its final musical of the summer series: “Broadway Rocks”.
A cast of six skilled performers have come together to deliver a night of lively, entertaining show music that is sure to set feet a tapping and to take those in the audience on a journey back to what each remembers about life when he or she first heard these familiar songs.
“Demetria Joyce Bailey has been a summer favorite this year at BRT,” says Deborah Fleischman, a spokeswoman for the theater. Ms. Bailey, a Barrymore Award nominee for Outstanding Actress in the Musical Ethel Waters, has also appeared in this year’s two previous musicale programs at the Theatre. She also serves as Music Director for Gimme the Mic Philadelphia.
The other female performers in this ensemble are Lois Sach Binder, who has appeared in shows such as Hello Dolly at the Walnut Street Theatre and in Lies and Legends: The Musical Stories of Harry Chapin at the Act II Playhouse, in Ambler, PA, and Jennie Eisenhower, a two-time Barrymore Award winner—for Outstanding Actress in a Musical (Forbidden Broadway) and for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Musical (The Wild Party). The Barrymore Awards are given annually by the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia.
The male singers/performers in “Broadway Rocks” have very diverse backgrounds. Justin Gabriel Ballasy, a 14-year-old, has been a member of New York’s Tap City Youth Ensemble for the past four years and has appeared on television—on Nickelodeon, MTV, and America’s Got Talent. “[Justin] won BRT’s StarQuest 2010 talent show last spring,” said Fleischman, “[as] the most talented person in Bucks County with a self-choreographed solo tap dance routine.”
John D. Smitherman is a multi-award winning actor and has just finished a tour with Shirley Jones and the Hollywood Symphony. His acting awards include a Handy Award (for Best Actor in a Comedy—Out of Order), an Apple Award (for Best Actor in a Musical—Oklahoma!), a Grandview Award (for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical—South Pacific), and two Salt Awards (for Best Actor in a Musical—The Secret Garden and Jekyll & Hyde).
Anthony D’Amato has appeared in musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar, the Who’s Tommy, and the Sundance Channel’s Hair: Let the Sun Shine In, having contributed direction to this last production. “Anthony [. . .] is a favorite performer with the Musicale Series,” said Fleischman.
“Broadway Rocks” runs through August 22nd at the Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe Street in Bristol, PA, with performances Friday and Saturday nights at 8:00 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 3:00 p.m. Tickets are $36 (or $10 for students under 25, with ID and proof of age). For more information, call (215) 785-0100 or see http://www.brtstage.org/. The theater’s main floor is ADA accessible.
“The show follows the pulse of Broadway,” said Fleischman. It will highlight such well-known favorites as “Buenos Aires” from Evita, “December 1963 (Oh What a Night)” from Jersey Boys, “I Got Rhythm” (from Girl Crazy), “Luck Be a Lady” (from Guys and Dolls), “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (from Annie Get Your Gun), “Tonight” (from West Side Story), and many other pulsating and irresistible tunes. It will include ensemble singing, solos, and medleys.
As a genre, the musical is a form of theater that combines music, songs, plot, dialogue, atmosphere, and choreography, as well as technical aspects, such as staging and lighting, to tell a story in an entertaining way. Today, musicals are performed worldwide, but they have a long, elaborate history. Starting in the late 1920s, the musical began to move from a type of musical comedy show to a more fixed form focusing on a play involving music as a key element. Show Boat, which premiered on December 27, 1927, at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York, began to establish this new genre, and its success encouraged other writers and composers to try to use its basic format, integrating songs, choreography, and the serious and important questions of life. Later, Rodgers and Hammerstein, arguably the most important team of musical-play writers, further integrated all the theatrical and musical elements to communicate more clearly and effectively the meanings and messages of the plays—and to develop the genre further into what is generally understood as a musical today. Their early vehicle to do this was their renowned Oklahoma! (1943).
“Since 1986, [the Bristol Riverside Theatre] has brought consistently acclaimed professional theatre to Bucks County and maintained a long-term commitment to finding and developing new plays,” said Fleischman. As a winner of several Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theater, the Bristol Riverside Theatre sponsors a new play series, called America Rising, and has, to date, developed a number of new works, namely the plays The Balkan Women by Jules Tasca, The Majestic Kid by Mark Medoff, Happy Ending by Garson Kanin, I Married Wyatt Earp by Shielah Rae, Thomas Edward West, and Michele Brourman, and two musicals by country music star Larry Gatlin: Alive and Well (and Livin’ in the Land of Dreams) and Texas Flyer.
In addition to its search for new plays and its summer musicale series, the Bristol Riverside Theatre produces plays in a 5-show season yearly (from September through May), sponsors a summer jazz weekend, holds a winter musicale (in December), and hosts children’s theatre productions, an annual Poetry Slam, and a summer camp called Artrageous.
As summer begins to wind down, Broadway songs, such as “America”, “Strikin’ Up the Band”, and “Dancing in the Dark” are able to keep one hopping—and rocking, so hurry and catch the “Broadway Rocks” concert. The curtain is about to go up.
© 2010 by Catherine J. Barrier. All rights reserved.
