COMING UP AT BIDDEFORD CITY THEATER: Fuddy Meers. |
A few weeks before I moved away from New York City forever, my mother came down from Maine — ostensibly to visit me, but really for her last chance to catch Nathan Lane in The Producers. If only we hadn’t tarried for bagels on the way to the standby line. You can be sure I’ll invite Mom this summer to see (sans Lane) Mel Brooks’s über-acclaimed play about stooges making plays. It runs in summer stock first at MAINE STATE MUSIC THEATRE (June 4-21), and then farther south at the OGUNQUIT PLAYHOUSE (July 16-August 9).
I’m happy to report that a number of other summer productions will be sending up various cultural phenomena. First of all, there’s the musical alien-horror comedy that parodies not only musicals but also aliens, horror, and ’60s soul and R&B: Little Shop of Horrors runs in repertory (with The Pajama Game) at SEACOAST REP (June 26-August 24).
Gentler satire, of Elvis-era youth culture, plays at THE GASLIGHT in Bye, Bye Birdie (June 19-28); and high opera (and pirates) get a roasting in The Pirates of Penzance at HACKMATACK PLAYHOUSE (July 23-August 2). Gilbert and Sullivan fans might also venture to the PENOBSCOT THEATRE in late July for the G&S Society of Hancock County. At the THEATER AT MONMOUTH, Victorian Gothic and vampires will get sent up in the two-man Mystery of Irma Vep (July 18-23, in rep). Finally, nothing like some community-theater shenanigans to skewer new fun out of Shakespeare: In An Evening of Culture, Mineola County takes a stab at Romeo and Juliet (BIDDEFORD CITY THEATER, August 8-17).
If you prefer your Shakespeare somewhat less adulterated, you’ll want to head up to Monmouth for two of the Bard’s interestingly genre-defying “problem plays:” A Winter’s Tale (which Bill Van Horn directs as set in 19th-century Maine; August 1-21) and The Merchant of Venice, which will be accompanied by discussions with Augusta’s Temple Beth El and the Maine Holocaust and Human Rights Center (July 25-August 22; both are in rep).
Like Merchant, many summer offerings deal with schisms or tensions between groups, classes, or castes. The blockbuster musical Les Misérables concerns haves and have-nots over several decades in 19th-century France (Maine State Music Theatre, August 6-24), while in My Fair Lady, a professor sets out to remake a street-urchin into a high-society girl (Ogunquit Playhouse, August 13-September 6). The fault-lines are in the family in LANYARD PRODUCTIONS’ world premiere of Where I Dwell (August 13-16), in which a South Boston clan weathers the illness of its matriarch and its reunion with an estranged gay son. Then there are the doings of Christ himself, in Jesus Christ Superstar (MSMT, June 4-21); and the absurd social conventions of ancient Rome, in Sondheim’s farce A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (FREEPORT COMMUNITY PLAYERS, July 10-27).
