Based at the Caine Lyric Theatre in downtown Logan, the members of the Lyric Repertory have announced the play selections for their 2024 summer season.
LOGAN – The Lyric Repertory Company here has announced its line-up of productions for the 2024 summer season.
Following-up on the success of The Marvelous Wonderettes during the 2023 season, the Lyric Rep will lead off with Sh-Boom! Life Could Be a Dream, also by playwright Roger Bean.
The musical review will feature the former male members of the Crooning Crabcakes glee club at Springfield High School as they prepare for the “Dream of a Lifetime” talent search. The juke box musical’s score will includes easy listening hits from the 1950s and early 1960s including “Earth Angel,” “Only You,” “Stay,” and “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
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, it centers on the eccentric members of the Bliss family and their outlandish behavior when they each invite a guest to spend the weekend at their country home.
Hay Fever is an oldie but a goodie, last produced by the Lyric Repertory Company in 1981.
The Lyric’s next production will be Driving Miss Daisy, a heartwarming story of friendship overcoming prejudice.
The 1988 Pulitzer Prize winner by playwright Alfred Uhry is part of his “Atlanta Trilogy,” dealing with Jewish families in the South during the first half of the 20th Century.
Inspired by real-life story of Uhry’s grandmother, Driving Miss Daisy focuses on an elderly Jewish matron and her Black chauffeur. The stage play was later adapted into an Oscar-winning movie starring Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman.
Probably the most challenging offering of the Lyric 2024 season will be Shear Madness, an interactive whodunit and one of the longest-running non-musical plays in theater history.
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.
With much of the dialogue improvised by the actors and the play’s ending being whatever the audience decides, local theater aficionados have been requesting that the Lyric stage Shear Madness for years.
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.
The Lyric troupe is also again 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 — 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.
That event 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 next season will kick off in June of 2024.