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Audience Favorites Returning to Mac-Haydn Stage
Posted by Gail M. Burns - April 2010
Mac-Haydn Theatre audiences will be happy to greet many of their favorite performers back on stage for the 2010 season.
The season starts with a bang, with the sharp-shootin’ favorite Annie Get Your Gun, May 27 through June 6. Karla Shook stars as the gal who Can’t Get A Man With A Gun, Annie Oakley. Ms. Shook’s range of roles from sweet and determined Irene Molloy in Hello, Dolly! to firm and vampy Irene Roth in Crazy For You have put her at the top of the favorite performer list for several seasons. She will switch to the other side of the theatre-in-the-round stage to direct The Secret Garden.
Mac-Haydn’s all-time favorite leading lady, Monica M. Wemitt. has a host of enviable Mac-Haydn roles to her credit, most recently 2009′s Dolly Levy in Hello, Dolly! and Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast. She’ll be a season highlight when she ‘coaxes the blues right out of the horn’, as everyone’s favorite Auntie, Mame!, bringing fun, laughs and great songs like We Need A Little Christmas and If He Walked In To My Life, August 5 through 15. She will end the season directing not only a host of star-struck teenagers but also herself in Bye Bye Birdie, September 10 through 19. Ms. Wemitt plays Mae Peterson, the most unappreciated mother ever, in the show that’s all about teen idols and boppin’ 1950′s songs: One Boy, Kids, Lot of Livin’ To Do.
Ben Jacoby sheds his Mac-Haydn masked man image, gained as The Phantom in Phantom in 2008 and The Beast in Beauty and the Beast in 2009. He starts this summer as Neville Cravin in The Secret Garden, a warm and wonderful show which invites the whole family to Come To My Garden as beautiful songs tell a love story for all ages, June 24 through July 4. Mr. Jacoby also plays the romantic lead of the most romantic show of the summer, Showboat, the classic favorite that just keeps rollin’ along with a score that includes Ol’ Man River, Only Make Believe, August 19 to September 5.
Noted for his character creations on the Mac-Haydn stage, John Saunders will add another to his long list of roles here by playing Charlie Davenport in Annie Get Your Gun. Mr. Saunders will also direct Chicago when the long-time most requested show sizzles the Mac-Haydn stage with intrigue, excitement, Fosse dancing, All That Jazz, and Razzle Dazzle July 8 to 18!
Jon Reinhold, who played Gaston, the villain you loved to hate in Beauty and the Beast last summer returns as a hero this year, saving the Senators as Joe Hardy in Damn Yankees. With the national pastime, devilish good fun and songs like Whatever Lola Wants and You’ve Gotta Have Heart, you’ll strike out if you miss Damn Yankees, playing July 22 to August 1.
Kelly L. Shook, whose direction and choreography made 2009′s Joseph and the amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat a delight, takes on the staging of shipboard romance, gangsters, tap dancing and Cole Porter songs like Blow, Gabriel, Blow, and Let’s Misbehave in Anything Goes, June 10 through 20.
Jason Whitfield, whose swiveling hips wowed the gals on and off stage as Pharoah in Joseph will be in love and out shot as Frank Butler in Annie Get Your Gun.
Some other crowd pleasers coming back to the Mac-Haydn stage are Kellyn Uhl, slated to play Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie, and Andrea Doto, the sassy sidekicks in Sweet Charity last year, will be doing their dancing magic again this summer. Also returning are Ryan VanDenBoom, and Seth Eliser, Gaston’s faithful and fumbling sidekick in Beauty and The Beast..