Tag Archives: Middletown Lyric Theatre

2017 – 2018 SEASON

SEPTEMBER 15, 16, 22 & 23
LOST IN YONKERS – Comedy: By: Neil Simon
By America’s great comic playwright, this memory play is set in Yonkers in 1942. Bella is thirty-five years old, mentally challenged, and living at home with her mother, stern Grandma Kurnitz. As the play opens, ne’er-do-well son Eddie deposits his two young sons on the old lady’s doorstep. He is financially strapped and taking to the road as a salesman. The boys are left to contend with Grandma, with Bella and her secret romance, and with Louie, her brother, a small-time hoodlum in a strange new world called Yonkers

NOVEMBER 10, 11, 17 & 18
THE GAME’S AFOOT: Farce by: Ken Ludwig
It is December 1936 and Broadway star William Gillette, admired the world over for his leading role in the play Sherlock Holmes, has invited his fellow cast-members to his Connecticut castle for a weekend of revelry. But when one of the guests is stabbed to death, the festivities in this isolated house of tricks and mirrors quickly turn dangerous. Then it’s up to Gillette himself, as he assumes the persona of his beloved Holmes, to track down the killer before the next victim appears. The danger and hilarity are non-stop in this glittering whodunit set during the Christmas holidays.

FEBRAURY 16, 17 23 & 24
GRAND CONCOURSE: Comedy/Drama by: Heidi Schreck
Having dedicated her life to religious service, Shelley runs a Bronx soup kitchen with unsentimental efficiency, but lately her heart’s not quite in it. Her brisk nature masks an unsettling fear that her efforts are meaningless. When Emma — an idealistic but confused college dropout — arrives to volunteer, her reckless mix of generosity and self-involvement pushes Shelley to the breaking point. With keen humor and startling compassion, Heidi Schreck’s play navigates the mystery of faith, the limits of forgiveness, and the pursuit of something resembling joy

APRIL 13, 14, 20 & 21
MY NAME IS ASHER LEV – Drama Adapted by: Aaron Posner
Asher Lev tells his story in a series of flashbacks. He is a Ladover Hasidic Jew born with a great artistic talent. His sect of Judaism, however, does not believe that art is a worthwhile pursuit. When he begins to draw nudes and pictures of the Cruxifixion, Through the years, he has continued to argue with his parents about the nature and value of his work. They attend one of his shows in New York, but are horrified by the centerpiece of the exhibit:a painting of Jesus Christ

MAY 11, 12, 18 & 19
CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION: Comedy/Drama By: Annie Baker
When four lost New Englanders who enroll in Marty’s six-week-long community-center drama class begin to experiment with harmless games, hearts are quietly torn apart, and tiny wars of epic proportions are waged and won. A beautifully crafted diorama, a petri dish in which we see, with hilarious detail and clarity, the antic sadness of a motley quintet.

JUNE 8,9,15 & 16
PRESENT LAUGHTER: Farce/Comedy By: Noel Coward
At the center of his own universe sits matinee idol Garry Essendine: suave, hedonistic and too old, says his wife, to be having numerous affairs. His line in harmless, infatuated debutantes is largely tolerated but playing closer to home is not. Just before he escapes on tour to Africa the full extent of his misdemeanors is discovered. And all hell breaks loose. Noel Coward’s Present Laughter premiered in the early years of the Second World War just as such privileged lives were threatened with fundamental social change.