Sierra
Repertory Announces 2014 Season
New
season to include Les Miserables, Sound of Music, Church
Basement Ladies Sequel and more
Sierra Repertory Theatre celebrates its 35th
Anniversary with what SRT artistic director Scott Viets called “one of the most
exciting and ambitious seasons in our entire history.” Commencing with the
international sensation Les Miserables,
the 2014 season will include eight plays and musicals – three shows with live
music, a sequel to last year’s Church
Basement Ladies, an Arthur Miller drama, a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic
and a new musical comedy about contestants at a spelling bee. Season tickets go
on sale September 1, and general admission tickets go on sale October 1.
The 2014 Gala opens the season with a special performance of Les Miserables. Audiences will sweep
through the musical masterpiece based on Victor Hugo’s epic tale of passion and
destruction during 19th Century France. Convict Jean Valjean tries
desperately to leave his past behind, avoid the relentless policeman, Javert,
and keep his vow to raise the young orphaned Cosette. With a soaring score (“Do
You Hear the People Sing,” “One Day More,” “I Dreamed a Dream,” and many more) that
has delighted audiences worldwide for more than two decades, the musical will thrill
audiences in the intimacy of SRT’s East Sonora Theatre, March 1 – May 4.
The season continues April 25 with Sierra Rep’s first Fallon
House Theatre production, A Second
Helping: The Church Basement Ladies Sequel, playing through June 8. SRT is
bringing back the heartwarming humor and antics of last season’s favorite flock
of Lutheran ladies from rural Minnesota. A Second Helping picks up the
story in 1969 with the world changing. As Vietnam War protests swell and women
everywhere demand equal pay for equal work, the finely tuned ladies running the
church basement kitchen face changes of their own, but they find strength in
each other from below the House of God!
June 13 – July 27 at East Sonora, SRT revives the popular Pump Boys and Dinettes. The 'Pump Boys'
sell high octane on Highway 57 in Grand Ole Opry country and the 'Dinettes,'
Prudie and Rhetta Cupp, run the diner next door. Together they fashion an
evening of country western songs that received unanimous raves from critics and
audiences across the country, on and off-Broadway, and in three record-breaking
runs at Sierra Rep. With heartbreak and hilarity, they perform on guitars,
piano, bass and, yes, kitchen utensils. The New York Times wrote, “It doesn't
merely celebrate the value of friendship and life's simple pleasures, it
embodies them.”
Following Pump Boys, another
Sierra Rep audience favorite returns to the Fallon house July 11 – August 31.
Possibly the most glorious musical ever created, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music follows the true
story of the Von Trapp family in Austria. This show has it all – an
irrepressible heroine who finds her calling, lonely children who find a mother,
an aloof Naval officer who finds a wife, and a united family who find courage
in one another as they escape the approaching evil of the Third Reich. Audiences
will rejoice in the well-known songs that include “My Favorite Things,”
“Do-Re-Mi,” “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” and “Edelweiss.”
August 29 – September 21, SRT takes on its first Arthur Miller
drama, All My Sons. A powerful story
of two families and a war-time catastrophe established Miller as a leading
voice in the American theatre. This classic Tony Award-winning drama examines
Miller’s familiar themes of fathers and sons, guilt, love and personal ethics. When
a company’s defective airplane parts cause the deaths of many men in World War
II, one partner went to prison and the other made a fortune. The tragedies left
shadows of bitterness and guilt that escalate to an electrifying climax. The
Los Angeles Times wrote, “…the quality of its writing hasn't tarnished, its moral
issues haven't aged, and its tragic events can still pack a wallop.”
In its regional premiere, the new musical A Murder, A Mystery and A Marriage finds its source in the recently
published Mark Twain short story and features live music. The production will
play September 26 – October 26 at the Fallon House Theatre. With heroes,
heroines and villains, this melodrama has plenty of goofy jokes and red hot
fiddlin’. The zany small town of Deer Lick, Missouri is thrown into frenzy when
a mysterious visitor arrives. A young romance is tested and a town patriarch is
murdered. Was it the local store clerk with a vendetta or the suave Frenchman?
Who will Mary marry? Small town antics, homespun humor and Bluegrass melodies
deliver the clues in classic Twain style.
Closing the East Sonora season, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee will play
October 24 – November 23. A hilarious tale of overachievers’ angst, the musical
chronicles the experience of six adolescent outsiders vying for the spelling
championship of a lifetime. The show's Tony Award winning creative team has
invented an unlikely hit musical about an odd set of heroes for whom a spelling
bee is the one place where they can stand out and fit in at the same time. The
Wall Street Journal wrote, "It's spelled W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L! You’ll have the time of your life!”
The season at Fallon House concludes with the inspirational
spiritual sounds of a travelling family band in A Sanders Family Christmas, playing November 14 – December 21. It's
Christmas Eve in 1941, just 18 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The
Sanctified Sanders Family Singers are heading up the annual Christmas
celebration at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, while saying a bittersweet
goodbye to their only son before he ships out with the Marines. Reverend Mervin
Oglethorpe and the Sanders family attempt to raise the spirits of their
faithful flock (the audience!). Chicago Theatre Beat described the show as “…one
of the best Christmas shows that I have ever seen… an inspiring musical that is
as smart as it is heartwarming”.
Season tickets for 2014 go on sale September 1 through the
Sierra Rep box office and can be purchased over the phone at 209-532-3120 or in
person at the East Sonora Theatre, located at 13891 Mono Way. Single tickets go
on sale October 1. For more information, visit www.sierrarpep.org.
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