Our Current Season: Those Oldies, But Goodies!

The Theatre Company is pleased to announce our twenty-first season! Our theme for the 2007-2008 season is "Those Oldies But Goodies!", and theatre fans are sure to be delighted by this impressive line up of hit shows!

All TTC performances run Friday, Saturday and Sunday:

• Friday Evening: 7 p.m.
• Saturday Matinee: 2 p.m.
• Saturday Evening: 7 p.m.
• Sunday Matinee: 2 p.m.

Grease! - This energetic musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey takes its name from the 1950s U.S. working-class youth subculture known as the "greasers". The musical, set in 1959 in fictional Rydell High in Chicago, focuses on the romance between high schoolers Danny Zuko and Sandy Dumbrowski and tackles such social issues as teenage pregnancy and gang violence. With its themes of love, friendship, and teenage rebellion, Grease is sure to delight Theatre Company fans as our season opener! The original 1971 production of Grease was staged at the Kingston Mines Theater in the Old Town section of Chicago. Producers Ken Waissman and Maxine Fox saw it and suggested to the playwrights it might work better as a full-scale musical, and told them if they were willing to rework it and if they liked the end result, they would produce it off-Broadway. The team headed to New York City and after additional collaboration and refinements, the rest is history! Grease opened June 7, 1972 and ran for an incredible 3,388 performances! The show went on to become a West End hit, a hugely successful film, a popular 1994 Broadway revival, and a staple of regional theatre, summer stock, community theatre, and high school drama groups. After twenty previews, a Broadway revival opened on May 11, 1994 and ran for 1,505 performances. A second revival on both Broadway and the West End is scheduled to begin previews in July 2007 [Source: Wikipedia].

Auditions: July 29 & 30, 2007 (Cast List)
Performances: Sept. 7-9, 14-16, 21-23
Buy Tickets for Grease!

Funny Girl - This hit musical, Funny Girl, by Isobel Lennart, Jule Styne, and Bob Merrill, will hit The Theatre Company stage for the first-time ever this season! The show is based on the life and career of Broadway and film star and comedienne Fanny Brice and her stormy relationship with entrepreneur and gambler Nicky Arnstein. Originally entitled "My Man", the Broadway production opened on March 26, 1964 and eventually ran for 1,348 performances! The original cast included Barbra Streisand, Sydney Chaplin, Kay Medford, Danny Meehan, Jean Stapleton, and Lainie Kazan, who also served as Streisand's understudy. Later in the run, Streisand and Chaplin were replaced by Mimi Hines and Johnny Desmond, and Hines' husband and comedy partner Phil Ford also joined the cast. The show was nominated for eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Composer and Lyricist, Best Actor in a Musical (Chaplin), Best Actress in a Musical (Streisand), Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Meehan), Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Medford), Best Choreography, and Best Producer of a Musical (Ray Stark). The musical is set in and around New York City just prior to and following World War I. Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice, awaiting the return of husband Nick Arnstein from prison, reflects on their life together, and their story is told as a flashback [Source: Wikipedia].

Auditions: Sept. 9 & 10, 2007 (Cast List)
Performances: October 12-14, 19-21, 2007
Buy Tickets for Funny Girl

A Christmas Carol - From the creators of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" "Alladin" and "Seussical" comes the Broadway version of the Christmas classic, this Brazos Valley premiere includes such songs as "The Years Are Passing By" and "A Place Called Home." The much-loved film of the same name was adapted from this stage version, with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and book by Mike Ockrent. This Christmastime favorite is sure to delight TTC fans of all ages, so be sure to get your tickets early!

Auditions: October 28 & 29, 2007 (Cast List)
Performances: Dec. 7-9, 14-16
Buy Tickets for A Christmas Carol

Camelot - The Theatre Company is delighted to bring Camelot to the Brazos Valley this season! Written in 1960 by Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics) and Frederic Loewe (music), the musical is based on the King Arthur legend as adapted from the T. H. White novel "The Once and Future King". The main conflict of the novel and the play is the affair between Arthur's wife, Guenevere, and his friend, Sir Lancelot. The original production ran on Broadway for 873 performances, winning four Tony Awards and spawning several revivals, foreign productions and a film version. The original cast featured an all-star lineup, including Richard Burton as King Arthur, Julie Andrews as Queen Guenevere, Robert Goulet as Lancelot, and Roddy McDowall as Mordred [Source: Wikipedia]. With knights in shining armor, castles, jousting, and romance, Camelot is sure to delight Theatre Company fans as our first show of 2008!

Auditions: Jan. 20 & 21, 2008 (Cast List)
Performances: Feb. 29-Mar. 2, 7-9
Buy Tickets for Camelot

Merrily We Roll Along - Merrily We Roll Along, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, is a play about a man who has lost the idealistic values of his youth. Its conceit is that its story is told in reverse, with the character regressing from a mournful adult to a young man whose future is filled with promise. The Broadway production opened on September 29, 1934 and ran for 155 performances. In 1981, the play was adapted as a musical with a book by George Furth and lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim. Furth and Sondheim retained the basic structure and overall theme of the play but updated it to encompass the period from 1955 to 1980. Its main protagonist was now Franklin Shepard who, in 1980, is a one-time composer of Broadway musicals who has become a highly successful but cynical and jaded film producer who has lost his friends, including longtime collaborator Charley Kringas. Moving backward in time we discover how Frank has become the man he is today. Sondheim was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music, and won the Drama Desk prize for his lyrics [Source: Wikipedia].

Auditions: March 9 & 10, 2008 (Cast List)
Performances: April 18-20, 25-27
Buy Tickets for Merrily We Roll Along

7 Brides For 7 Brothers - Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was originally a musical film released in 1954 based on the short story The Sobbin' Women, by Stephen Vincent Benét, which was based in turn on the Ancient Roman legend of The Rape of the Sabine Women. The film, a 1954 Oscar nominee for Best Picture, is particularly known for the unusual choreography by Michael Kidd, which makes dance numbers out of such mundane frontier pursuits as chopping wood and (most famously) raising a barn. In 1979, Lawrence Kasha and David Landay added new songs and adapted the production for the stage, where it subsequently enjoyed a lengthy critically and commercially successful national tour. The original stage cast included Debby Boone, David-James Carroll, Jeff Calhoun, and Lara Teeter. Its sole Tony Award nomination was for Best Original Score.

A 1985 West End production proved to be more successful, and a London cast recording was released by First Night Records. In 2005, a major revival was staged at the prestigious Goodspeed Opera House and earned rave reviews from Variety and the New York Times. Rewritten with a realistic approach, rustic orchestrations and a focus on the Oregon Trail, the show was quite different from its film predecessor. Plans for a 2005-2006 National Tour of the Goodspeed Opera House production failed. However, in 2007, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers became a joint production between Houston Theatre Under the Stars, Paper Mill Playhouse, North Shore Music Theatre, and Atlanta Theatre of the Stars. The current version is a hybrid between the literal approach of the Goodspeed production and the slapstick camp of the original film [Source: Wikipedia].

Auditions: April 27 & 28, 2008 (Cast List)
Performances: June 6-8, 13-15
Buy Tickets for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

The Pajama Game - For our 2008 summer show, The Theatre Company is pleased to bring the hit musical, The Pajama Game, to the Brazos Valley for the first time ever! Based on the novel 7-1/2 Cents by Richard Bissell, this energetic musical by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross ran on Broadway from May 13, 1954 to November 24, 1956. It was revived in 1973. A recent production by The Roundabout Theatre Company in 2006 starred Harry Connick, Jr. (Sid), with Kelli O'Hara (Babe) and Michael McKean (Hines). The original production won a Tony for best musical, and the most recent revival won a Tony Award for best revival. The story deals with labor troubles in a pajama factory, where worker demands for a seven and a half cent raise are going unheeded. In the midst of this ordeal, love blossoms between Babe, the complaint committee head, and Sid, the new factory superintendent in from Chicago. The revival includes three added songs, by Richard Adler. [Source: Wikipedia].

Auditions: June 16 & 17, 2008
Performances: August 1-3, 8-10
Buy Tickets for Pajama Game