The Davis clan at the Pickleville Playhouse in Garden City have announced their 2024 season. In addition to its original summer melodrama ‘Welcome to Dangerville’ and the Disney musical ‘Newsies,’ they will reprise the fall 2023 production of the hilarious ‘The Play That Goes Wrong.’
GARDEN CITY – The talented Davis clan has announced their line-up of shows at the Pickleville Playhouse for 2024.
This year, the Pickleville troupe will perform the original musical melodrama Welcome to Dangerville, the Disney musical Newsies and reprise the fall production from 2023 of The Play that Goes Wrong.
As usual, Welcome to Dangerville will be an original Pickleville production, with score and script by director Derek Davis.
Dubbed a “western misadventure,” the play centers on the hapless Hunters, a young couple who must veer from their intended mission of touring orphanages to find the perfect child to adopt when they are robbed by a notorious gang of bandits.
With the assistance of an oddball town mayor, the homemakers must turn bounty hunters to reclaim their stolen wealth.
Davis promises that Welcome of Dangerville will continue the Pickleville Playhouse’s tradition of providing a show full of lively tunes, belly laughs and a tear-jerking finale.
The original melodrama will be performed from Friday, May 24 through Labor Day (Monday, Sept. 2).
Also included in the Pickleville production schedule from Tuesday, June 18 through Friday, Aug. 16 will be the by-now familiar musical Newsies.
Newsies was something of a departure for the theater-mill at Disney Studios, since it was based on a 1992 live action film rather than an animated one.
Moreover, Newsies is loosely based on a historical event – the Newsboys Strike of 1899 in New York City.
With music by Alan Menken and a script by Harvey Fierstein, the show debuted on Broadway in 2012 and played for 1,000 performances before being launched on a national tour.
The boisterous Disney musical is familiar to local audiences because it was performed by the Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre in 2019 and by Music Theatre West in 2023.
Finally, the Pickleville company will provide a repeat of their uproarious 2023 fall production of the award-winning comedy and global phenomenon The Play That Goes Wrong.
Written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields of the London-based Mischief Theatre Company, the musical comedy uses the treasured theater gimmick of a play within a play to lampoon every actor’s nightmare of an opening where things go quickly from bad to utterly disastrous.
“This roaring 1920s whodunit has everything you never wanted in a show,” according to Davis, speaking with tongue firmly in cheek. “That includes an unconscious leading lady, a corpse that can’t play dead and actors who trip over everything — including their lines.
“Nevertheless, the accident-prone thespians battle against all odds to make it through to their final curtain call, with hilarious consequences!”
The comedy has been running in London since 2012. The Play that Goes Wrong opened on Broadway in 2017 and played for two years before moving Off-Broadway.
The Pickleville Playhouse will stage The Play That Goes Wrong from Friday, Sept. 20 through Saturday, Oct. 19.
Tickets for the 2024 season at Pickleville Playhouse will go on sale Friday, Jan. 26 at www.picklevilleplayhouse.com/ticket-information.