LOGAN – The Lyric Repertory Company here has announced its line-up of performers productions for the 2024 summer season.
The Lyric Rep season will lead off with Sh-Boom! Life Could Be a Dream, a nostalgic musical review by playwright Roger Bean and the sequel to the company’s all-female success in 2023 with the The Marvelous Wonderettes.
The juke box musical’s score will include easy listening hits from the 1950s and early 1960s including “Earth Angel,” “Only You,” “Stay,” and “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
Those familiar tunes will be performed by Cameron S. Neeley (previously seen in the Music Theatre West Production of Little Shop of Horrors), Jonah Newton, Jonathan Kaplan and Brett Terrell.
The cast of Sh-Boom! Will also feature Fred Coad and the always watchable Marin Robinson.
The Lyric company will then reach back into to its vault of audience favorites to reprise Hay Fever, a cross between high farce and a comedy of manners written by the inimitable Noel Coward in 1924.
Arguably the funniest play Coward every wrote, the play will feature Lyric veterans Leslie Brott, Equity actor Herb Newsome, Ms. Robison and Kaplan as the eccentric members of the Bliss family who display outlandish behavior when they each invite a guest to spend the weekend at their country home.
Those guests will include Lance Rasmussen, Sydnee Fullmer, Mia Gatherum and Newton, as well as Ari Whatcott.
The Lyric’s next production will be the small-cast favorite Driving Miss Daisy, a heartwarming story of friendship overcoming prejudice.
The 1988 Pulitzer Prize winner by drama playwright Alfred Uhry was later adapted into an Oscar-winning movie starring Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman.
Ms. Brott will lead the cast as Daisy Werthan with Newsome as her chauffeur and Rasmussen as her son.
Probably the most challenging offering of the Lyric 2024 season will be Shear Madness, an interactive whodunit and one of the long-running non-musical plays in theater history.
After scoring big in previous productions including The Fox on the Fairway in 2022 and last season’s Fences, actor Brandon Foxworth will return to lead the cast of Shear Madness.
Also on-hand to contribute to the zaniness will be Ms. Fullmer, Ms. Whatcott, Sumner Jones Shoell, Ryan Adams and Mitch Shira.
Combining aspects of a mystery, a farce and a rollicking party in a hair salon, Shear Madness get its audience into-the-act as murder investigators questioning the suspect actors.
As usual, the summer line-up will also include the Lyric’s popular InterACT and Vosco Call Spotlight events.
Now in its third year, the interACT: New Work Series highlights new plays by up-and-coming playwrights. The audience members then have the opportunity to stick around after the show to share their thoughts, offer feedback and “interact” with the director and actors.
In the style of last summer’s talk show format, the Vosco Call Spotlight events will feature three new guests on three separate evenings, sharing music, games, stories and laughs with summers citizens and members of the local theater community.
Among those being honored will be the husband-wife team of Stefan Espinosa and Vanessa Ballam from the Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre.
The Lyric troupe is also inviting audience members to join a week-long series of “Page to Stage” discussions at the Caine Lyric Theatre.
Each day will feature a different group of Lyric company members — including the administrative team, directors, designers, actors and stage managers – from 10 to 11 a.m. on June 3 to 7 for a lively give-and-take about the 2024 season’s challenges and opportunities.
Finally, for the first time in its history, the Lyric Repertory Company plans to host a Gala to launch its 2024 summer season on June 8.
That event, which will take place at the newly reopened Bluebird Restaurant, will include a dinner, music and entertainment to celebrate the season about to begin and announce what’s in store for the summer of 2025.
The Lyric Repertory Company’s mainstage productions will kick off on June 14.