The Theatre Group at SBCC has announced the 2018-19 season of plays will include Grease, The Game’s Afoot, Harvey and Significant Other.
The season opens with the musical, Grease (book, lyrics and music by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey) July 13-28 in the Garvin Theatre.
Meet Rydell High’s senior class of 1959: duck-tailed, hot-rodding T-Birds and their gum-snapping Pink Ladies in bobby sox and pedal pushers.
Head greaser Danny Zuko and new (good) girl Sandy Dumbrowski try to restore the romance of their “Summer Nights” as the rest of the gang sings and dances its way through such songs as “Greased Lightnin’,” “We Go Together and You’re the One That I Want.”
The tunes recall the music of Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Elvis Presley that became the soundtrack of a generation.
Next up, Oct. 12-27, in the Garvin Theatre, will be Ken Ludwig’s The Game’s Afoot, winner of the 2012 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allen Poe Award, Best Play.
It is December 1936, and Broadway star William Gillette, admired 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. It is then up to Gillette himself, as he assumes the persona of his beloved Holmes, to track down the killer before the next victim appears.
March 2-16 the Theatre Group at SBCC brings the classic Pulitzer Prize-winning play Harvey by Mary Chase to the Garvin.
Elwood P. Dowd is middle-aged, mild-mannered, and relatively wealthy. He is convinced he is attended by a 6-foot-plus tall white rabbit, who has become his greatest friend.
The rabbit, named Harvey, is invisible to everyone except Elwood, and Ellwood’s insistence on Harvey’s existence creates a social nightmare for his widowed sister Veta and her daughter Myrtle Mae.
The women decide to have Elwood committed to Chumley’s Rest, but it seems the imaginary Harvey has unexpectedly tangible powers, and soon everyone is falling under his invisible charms.
Our season’s final production will be Significant Other by Joshua Harmon, April 12-27, in the intimate Jurkowitz Theatre.
Jordan is single, and finding Mr. Right is much easier said than done. As he finds himself stuck in the stalwart cheerleader role for all his girlfriends’ romantic successes and marriages, he comes to realize the only thing harder than looking for love is supporting the loved ones around you.
SBCC Theatre Arts Department will present a student showcase production, The Last Lifeboat by Luke Yankee, Nov. 7-17 in the Jurkowitz Theatre.
J. Bruce Ismay was an upper-crust Englishman who always did what was expected of him.
He went to the best schools, married the right society girl (though he was in love with someone else) and vowed to his staunch, unfeeling father on his deathbed that he’d take over the family shipping business and build the biggest, most opulent ship the world had ever seen: the RMS Titanic.
What an accomplishment! We all know the story of how the ship sank — or do we? Ismay saved as many people as he could on that fateful night, and finally, with no women and children in sight, he stepped into the last lifeboat, and was branded a coward and a traitor forever.
The world needed a scapegoat for the sinking of the Titanic and Ismay became the perfect target. The Last Lifeboat is the story of the Titanic that has never been told. This epic tale explores not only the tragedy, but the sensationalized trials and aftermath of the night that changed the world forever.
Season tickets are now on sale. Single tickets go on sale June 18. Call the Garvin Box Office, 965-5935, for information or visit www.theatregroupsbcc.com.
— Pamela Lasker for the Theatre Group at SBCC.