SEPTEMBER 2016
LES BELLES SOEURS (The Sister’s-in-law)
Written by: Michel Tremblay
The setting of this unusual story was the spring of 1965. Germaine Lauzon, a housewife in a working neighborhood in Montréal, wins one million trading stamps. Once glued in booklets, they will allow her to acquire furnishings and accessories she has always dreamed about. She invites the women of her family and some neighbors to a stamp gluing session. As the play advances, we learn about the condition of each of the 14 women in Germaine’s home and the comedy progressively becomes a tragedy. It culminates in the plundering of trading stamps and Germaine’s possessions by her guests.
NOVEMBER 2016
THAT TIME OF THE YEAR: A musical revue
Concept & Lyrics by: Laurence Holzman & Felicia Needleman
Music by: Sanford Marc Cohen, Nicholas Levin, Donald Oliver, Kyle Rosen, Brad Ross, Mark Wherry and Wendy Wilf
Additional musical arrangements by: James Mironchik
Orchestations by: Annie Pasqua
That Time of the Year is a musical revue of 25 all-original Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s songs. Running the musical gamut from show tunes to rock, blues and jazz, the songs range from funny numbers highlighting the joys and anxieties of the holiday season to beautiful, touching ballads about the meaning behind the holidays.
MARCH 2017
MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION
Written by: George Bernard Shaw
Shaw’s controversial attack on society’s hypocrisy. Young Vivie Warren, emancipated, intelligent and self-sufficient is astounded to learn her mother rose from poverty to riches through prostitution—and also that she is now part owner and operator of a chain of brothels. Mrs. Warren ably justifies her past—attacking a hypocritical society that rewards vice and oppresses virtue. She states poverty and the society that fosters poverty are the real villains and that life in a brothel is preferable to life in a 19th century factory. Vivie, respecting her mother’s courage, accepts her past but not her present. She cuts herself off from her mother and, rejecting all suitors, throws herself into the independent life of a career woman.
APRIL 2017
THE BOOK CLUB PLAY
Written by: Karen Zacarías
A hit comedy about books and the people who love them. When the members of a devoted book club become the subjects of a documentary filmmaker and accept a provocative new member, their long-standing group dynamics take a hilarious turn. Sprinkled with, joy and novels galore.
MAY 2017
IT’S ONLY A PLAY
Written by: Terrence McNally
It’s the opening night of The Golden Egg on Broadway, and the wealthy producer Julia Budder is throwing a lavish party in her lavish Manhattan townhouse. Downstairs the celebrities are pouring in, but the real action is upstairs in the bedroom, where a group of insiders have staked themselves out to await the reviews. The group includes the excitable playwright; the possibly unstable wunderkind director; the pill-popping leading lady, treading the boards after becoming infamous in Hollywood; and the playwright’s best friend, for whom the play was written but who passed up this production for a television series. Add to this a drama critic who’s panned the playwright in the past and a new-in-town aspiring singer, and you have a prime recipe for the narcissism, ambition, childishness, and just plain irrationality that infuse the theatre—and for comedy. But don’t worry: This play is sure to be the hit they have all been hoping for.
For more information visit www.middletownlyric.org
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