New England Entertainment Digest - Online
Brought to you by JAC Publishing & Promotions - Serving New England Since 1979!

Quannapowitt Players Launch 70th Season with Original Musical Review

READING, MA: Quannapowitt Players will kick off their 70th season with a journey to the cutting edge of contemporary musical theater. N Tune: A Musical Coming of Age is an original musical review conceived by Director James J. Girgenti and Musical Director Mario Cruz, the artistic team behind QP’s acclaimed productions of Cabaret, Anything Goes and One Night Only.

Says Girgenti, “Most musical reviews are collections of popular numbers from familiar musicals we’ve all seen…sometimes many times. N Tune is more edgy, more urban. We’ve taken some of the best pieces from newer musicals that you’d usually have to travel to New York to see. We’re going to be doing music from Spring Awakening (this year’s Tony Award Winner) that’s so new it’s never been produced beyond Broadway. But this is the music that speaks directly to our experience in the world today. The concept behind N Tune revolves around facades and the masks we sometime use to cover what we might be afraid to show or even truly feel and understand.”

Together with numbers from musicals, like Rent, Closer Than Ever and The Life, the show includes music from contemporary classics that have enjoyed recent revivals, like Sweet Charity, Company and A Chorus Line – but often with a different take. Says Musical Director Mario Cruz, “There’s more than one way to look at a song. With a traditional book musical, we have to stay true to the script, but with a review we can take a different approach.”

N Tune showcases the singing and dancing talents of over two-dozen performers, including: Karin Anderson (Danvers), Melissa Bisso (Wakefield), Dean Bruno (Bradford), Kai Chao (Lynn), Marelena Cruz (Tewksbury), Carol Gallagher (Hyde Park), Elle Gallo (Bradford), Lovely Hoffman (Roxbury), Laura Kain (Weymouth), Claudia Koziner (Haverhill), Robert Lobrotto (Medford), Ellen Lohman (Tewksbury), Margaret McCarty(Wakefield), Nelia Miller (Lynnfield), Melinda Mogel (Arlington), Hannah Owens (Reading), John Pease (Wakefield), John Pirroni (Somerville), Carol Raiche (Bradford), Maria Rivera (Methuen), Jon Roth (Durham, NH), Becca Schneider (Hyde Park), Elizabeth Sheeran (Wakefield), Ariel Twohig (Andover), Phyllis Uloth (Wilmington), and Kathleen Wackowski (Andover).

N Tune: A Musical Coming of Age runs from September 14th through September 30th at Quannapowitt Playhouse, 55 Hopkins Street in Reading. Ticket information is available at 781-942-2212, or on line at www.qptheatre.com.  The best ticket value is a subscription to the entire 2007-08 season, which also includes Wonder of the World, by David Lindsay-Abaire, Hide and Seek, by Lezley Havard, and True West, by Sam Sheppard.