#Jayke Workman

[larryland]

REVIEW: "Cabaret" at the Mac-Haydn Theatre

REVIEW: “Cabaret” at the Mac-Haydn Theatre

[thekatsource-blog]

Kat and Jayke Workman recently.

[missmitchieg]

Kat_McNamara: Happy birthday to the one, the only, the babe that is my brother from another mother, @JaykeWorkman ! All these years later and we still love playing dress up. Here’s to a day as fabulous and beautiful as you! Xoxo

[nephilimupdates]

Beautiful new photos of #katmcnamara spending some time with her friend Jayke Workman over the weekend. Looks like her new hobby is continuing to "develop." 😉 via @jaykeworkman IG

[dlozlami]

The ladies of Sex and the City quarantine in Miranda’s Upper West Side apartment pic.twitter.com/yk09pQALOs

— Jayke Workman (@JaykeWorkman) April 18, 2020

via @Dloz_Lami April 19, 2020 at 10:47AM

[badlands75]

Badlands75RT @JaykeWorkman: The ladies of Sex and the City quarantine in Miranda’s Upper West Side apartment https://t.co/yk09pQALOs

The ladies of Sex and the City quarantine in Miranda’s Upper West Side apartment pic.twitter.com/yk09pQALOs

— Jayke Workman (@JaykeWorkman) April 18, 2020

from Twitter https://twitter.com/Badlands75 April 18, 2020 at 07:16PM via IFTTT

[prince-vegeta]

realizes jayke workman reblogged me

[joyaaah]

Watch if you want. That would be great

[larryland]

REVIEW: "Damn Yankees" at the Mac-Haydn Theatre

REVIEW: “Damn Yankees” at the Mac-Haydn Theatre

[larryland]

REVIEW: "Funny Girl" at the Mac-Haydn

REVIEW: “Funny Girl” at the Mac-Haydn

[larryland]

REVIEW: "Mamma Mia!" at the Mac-Haydn

REVIEW: “Mamma Mia!” at the Mac-Haydn

[thekatsource-blog]

We’ve been friends for so long I can’t remember which one of us is the bad influence. ❧ ✧ ➳ @jaykeworkman

Kat via Instagram and Twitter.

[larryland]

Hartford Stage Announces Casting for World Premiere of "The Flamingo Kid"

Hartford Stage Announces Casting for World Premiere of “The Flamingo Kid”

HARTFORD, CT — April 1, 2019 — Hartford Stage announced today the cast and creative team for the world premiere musical The Flamingo Kid, helmed by Artistic Director Darko Tresnjak. The musical, which closes the 2018-19 season, boasts an impressive cast of Broadway and regional theatre talent. Performances for The Flamingo Kid begin on Thursday, May 9, and run through Sunday, June 9.

The…

[larryland]

by Gail M. Burns

This weekend the Mac-Haydn is doing something it has almost never done in 50 years of presenting professional musical theatre – it is offering a world premiere of a new work. Wendy’s Shadow, an original work with book, music, and lyrics by Mac-Haydn Music Director David Maglione, with additional material by Tomas Ruiz, is making its debut as a part of the Children’s Theatre line-up on August 3 and running Friday and Saturday mornings at 10:30 am until August 18.

“Having the Mac-Haydn develop and present new musicals is something I really want to work on in the coming years,” said Artistic Director John Saunders. “We presented an evening of work In Development late last season which featured songs from Wendy’s Shadow and another musical David is working on. Our associate Producer Monica Wemitt and I went down to New Jersey to see a full workshop production this past spring, and I immediately asked David if he could create a one-hour version for our season.”

Saunders is directing the show, which also marks the Mac-Haydn’s first production of any version of the Peter Pan story. Sebastiani Romagnolo is choreographing, and Mainstage favorites Kelly Gabrielle Murphy as Wendy, Jayke Workman as Peter, and Gabe Belyeu as Captain Hook head a cast of fifteen. Jeff Little has orchestrated Maglione’s score, which will be performed by a four-piece band under Maglione’s baton.

Maglione has been working on the show on and off for about five years now. “It started when I was working on a production of the 1954 musical version of Peter Pan, the version we all associate with Mary Martin. I wrote a new song to replace “Never Never Land.” I had never written a musical before and didn’t really consider myself a composer, but when I played this song and talked with friends and colleagues about it, they were all immediately on board. There is a real timelessness to the story.”

Over the years Maglione and Ruiz have collaborated with a number of artists, notably Jason Cannon of Florida Studio Theatre, who worked dramaturgically on the book early in the process. “So many people have touched this project and impacted my life,” Maglione mused. “I’m really at the end of this five-year process.”

In his second season as Music Director at the Mac-Haydn, Maglione is the full time Music Director at the School of Visual and Performing Arts at Montclair High School, as well as a pianist at Montclair State University in New Jersey. He is currently writing music and lyrics for a new musical entitled The Only Way Out…, which will receive a staged reading at Open Bar Theatricals in the fall of 2018.

In Wendy’s Shadow we meet Wendy as an orphan, adopted by the Darling family. She is unsure of her place in the family and in the world, but the Darling brothers, John (Troy Lingelback) and Michael, (Charlie Munday) have already been to Neverland and they are eager to introduce Wendy to Peter and the Lost Boys. Even strong-willed Tinker Bell (Jonah Hale) comes around and embraces Wendy as part of the gang, and gets to redeem herself for her selfish feelings as the show progresses.

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“The show really focuses on Wendy’s experience with these friends she meets. This girl who feels alone and invisible is nurtured into a young adult through living this story which lets her find her shadow and find out who she is,” Maglione explained. “The title came before we started to write the show, but as the shape of the story has changed the title rings true more and more. Wendy’s Shadow has been our anchor.

“Sometimes Peter Pan feels like a boys’ story and this show has more girl power,” Saunders noted. I like that it evens the playing field in Neverland and in the Nursery.” To that end some traditionally male characters will be played by women, as women, notably Smee, the lovable nonconformist pirate, who will be played by Maggie Eley.

Saunders and Maglione promise that Captain Hook and his pirate band will not be too scary for little ones, but that there will be plenty to entertain children and adults alike. “Fifity percent of the audience for our children’s shows are adults,” Saunders acknowledged. “One of the reasons brands like Disney and Pixar and The Muppets are so successful is that they offer entertainment on a variety of different levels for folks at different stages in life.”

Wendy’s Shadow, with book, music, and lyrics by Mac-Haydn Music Director David Maglione, with additional material by Tomas Ruiz, directed by John Saunders and choreographed by Sebastiani Romagnolo, will be performed August 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th, 17th & 18th at 10:30 am at the Mac-Haydn Theatre, 1925 NY Route 203 in Chatham, NY. Tickets are just $12. Call 518-392-9292 or click here

Mac-Haydn Theatre Presents World Premiere of “Wendy’s Shadow” by Gail M. Burns This weekend the Mac-Haydn is doing something it has almost never done in 50 years of presenting professional musical theatre – it is offering a world premiere of a new work.

[larryland]

by Barbara Waldinger

The Mac-Haydn Theatre, celebrated for its spectacular musical revivals, opened its 50th season with the Tony-award winning Damn Yankees. The performance delivered on its promise of outstanding singer/dancers directed (by John Saunders) and choreographed (by Brian Knowlton) to a fare-thee-well.

Damn Yankees first opened in 1955, written by George Abbott and Douglas Wallop, based on Wallop’s novel:  The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.  Abbott directed, Bob Fosse choreographed, and Richard Adler and Jerry Ross wrote the music (as they had for Pajama Game).   The producers sought a female dancer for the leading lady and eventually settled on Gwen Verdon, a dancer who had only sung one song in her previous show:  Can-Can.  Bob Fosse took a chance with her, Verdon won a Tony for her performance and they married in 1960.  A 1994 Broadway revival with Bebe Neuwirth was also awarded a best musical Tony.

The show is set in the mid-1950s, during a stretch when the New York Yankees won the American League pennant virtually every year.  In a retelling of the Faust legend, the middle-aged Joe Boyd (Steven Hassmer), disgusted with his beloved Washington Senators’ terrible record, screams:  “I’d sell my soul for one long ball hitter.”  Presto!  The devil—Mr. Applegate (Mark Hardy) arrives amidst a red cloud of smoke, and proposes that he convert the Senators into champions by changing Boyd into young phenom Joe Hardy (Michael Brennan).  Boyd cannot resist this temptation, but he insists on an escape clause that will allow him to return to his normal life and loving wife (Julie Galorenzo) if chooses to do so by the end of the baseball season.  Fearing that Joe will slip through his fingers, Applegate employs his lovely seductress, Lola (Corrinne Turk) to seal the deal.  And will he abandon his wife for the siren Lola?

The production values are top notch, as we have come to expect from the Mac-Haydn Theatre.  The number and style of  period costumes (by Jimm Halliday) are amazing, especially considering that this is only the first show of the season.  The three-piece suits in white or black with touches of red designed by Halliday for Applegate are stunning as are Lola’s outfits.  The lighting (by Andrew Gmoser) creates magical moments from moonlight and stars, to blinking blubs ringing the ceiling, to the darkness of the denizens of hell.  Musical director David Maglione provides his own kind of magic, with the few instruments sounding like a full orchestra.  Music accompanies actors dressed as movers while they effortlessly relocate set pieces onto and off of the stage, as designed by Kevin Gleason, including an upstage platform representing the Boyds’ home. Saunders and Knowlton keep the action moving from beginning to end, with some thirty performers charging headlong, in and out and through the aisles.

Because the stage is so tiny, the aisles must stay clear, which means the performance cannot begin until everyone is seated in this theatre-in-the round.  Many audience members, some with walkers, canes, and wheelchairs, are transported by bus from senior residences so it takes a good deal of time to seat everyone both at the beginning and after intermission.  This can be a challenge in a show as long as Damn Yankees, running two and a half hours with an additional 25 minute intermission.

While some of the songs have become standards, such as: “You Gotta Have Heart,” and “Whatever Lola Wants,” others, perhaps less well-known, can be rollicking, like the hoedown in “Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, MO,” wonderfully comic (“The Game”) when the players force themselves to think about the game instead of their girlfriends, or moving, as in the ballads “Goodbye, Old Girl,” sung by Hassmer, and “Near to You,” a duet with Brennan and Galorenzo.   All of the singers have strong voices in this production but these three are standouts.

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Having seen the original Broadway production of Damn Yankees as a child, I was anxious to return to it after all these years.  But the script doesn’t hold up as well as I remembered:  in this age of #metoo, it is difficult to watch the sexy Lola be foisted on the young Joe.  It is unclear why Applegate tries to undermine his protégé by creating a scandal that seemingly prevents the devil from adhering to his part of the bargain.  And that first act could definitely benefit from some cutting of songs and reprises that don’t further the plot.

But outstanding performances make up for deficiencies in the script:  Mark Hardy is a smart and smarmy devil, setting just the right tone for Applegate;  Galorenzo and Hassmer are a convincing middle-aged couple—the counterpoint in their song “Six Months Out of Every Year” is a joy to see and hear, as Hassmer rages about his team’s loss;  Brennan makes it easy for us to accept him as Joe’s younger self with his combination of enthusiasm and wistfulness;  Corrinne Turk is a fine singer/dancer as Lola;  Doris (Emma Flynn) and her sister (Maggie Eley)  playing neighborhood women as comic caricatures,  are welcome additions to the plot; Gabe Belyeu as Van Buren, the team’s manager and Monk Schane Lydon, as the owner, with his gravelly voice and cigar are a perfect duo; and Megan Hasse as Gloria Thorpe, the reporter, shines.

Look for Funny Girl in June, Mac-Haydn’s next musical extravaganza.  Count on this theatre to do it justice!

DAMN YANKEES runs from May 24-June 3 on Thursdays at 2 & 8; Fridays at 8, Saturdays at 4 & 8, Sundays at 2 & 7 and during the second week on Wednesday at 2 at The Mac-Haydn Theatre.  Tickets may be purchased online at www.machaydntheatre.org or call 518-392-9292.

The Mac-Haydn Theatre presents DAMN YANKEES by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop.  Directed by John Saunders.  Cast:  Steven Hassmer (Joe Boyd), Michael Brennan (Joe Hardy), Julie Galorenzo (Meg Boyd), Mark Hardy (Applegate), Maggie Eley (Sister), Emma Flynn (Doris), Gabe Belyeu (Van Buren), Megan Hasse (Gloria Thorpe), Monk Schane Lydon (Welch), Corrinne Turk (Lola) and others.  Choreographer:  Brian Knowlton; Musical Director:  David Maglione; Costume Design:  Jimm Halliday; Scenic Design:  Kevin Gleason; Lighting Design:  Andrew Gmoser; Sound Design/Audio Engineer:  Monica Gonzales-Burgos; Stage Manager: Sarah Kozma.

Running Time:  three hours including a 25 minute intermission; The Mac-Haydn Theatre, 1925 Route 203, Chatham, NY; Wednesdays (second week only) through Sundays from 5/24; closing 6/3.

REVIEW: “Damn Yankees” at the Mac-Haydn Theatre by Barbara Waldinger The Mac-Haydn Theatre, celebrated for its spectacular musical revivals, opened its 50th season with the Tony-award winning…

[prince-vegeta]

But how are we not appreciating Jayke workman here