Broadway Their Way
Uptown Players in Dallas scores big premieres for exciting 2014 season
For its upcoming season, Uptown Players is planning a program that mixes the new and hot with the old and beloved. One American premiere and three regional premieres are slotted for the seven-show lineup, which includes the annual fundraiser Broadway Our Way.
Described as a concert that “light-heartedly pits the men against the women to determine who the true divas of the Dallas stage really are,” Broadway Our Way — now in its 12th year — runs for six performances from January 17-26, 2014.
Next up is a major score for Uptown: the reigning Tony Award winner for best play, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Christopher Durang’s farce — which parodies the tragic-comic plays of Anton Chekov — starred David Hyde Pierce and Sigourney Weaver during its initial Broadway run. Uptown’s version runs February 14-March 9, 2014.
Pageant follows, probably bringing with it a built-in audience that enjoyed the interactive show the last time Uptown produced it (as one of its first shows). Staged like a real pageant, the audience votes on the winner from among six contestants: Miss Deep South, Miss West Coast, Miss Great Plains, Miss Bible Belt, Miss Industrial Northeast and Miss Texas. Oh, and all the contestants are men. Runs March 28-April 13, 2014.
After the successful collaboration between Uptown and the Turtle Creek Chorale that resulted with last season’s concert version of Ragtime, this season we’ll be aurally treated to a concert version of Sweeney Todd. If you saw the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie, you know the show is about a murderous, vengeful barber in 19th century England. What you don’t know is that Stephen Sondheim’s famously tricky score is actually supposed to sound good. At Dallas City Performance Hall from April 24-26, 2014.
Nicky Silver’s dysfunctional family comedy The Lyons will get a regional premiere next May. The dark comedy played on Broadway in 2012, and critics lauded it for its familiar presence — a family airs their true feelings at the dying patriarch’s bedside — but unique Silver twist. The show runs from May 2-18, 2014.
A “naughty” musical import from London, Soho Cinders is a season bonus. Written by George Stiles, Anthony Drewe and Elliot Davis, the 2012 hit mixes politics with sex in a new take on the Cinderella story. Runs June 13-22, 2014.
In 2003, Hugh Jackman made Broadway feel all twitterpated when he starred in the musical The Boy From Oz, about the life of gay Australian singer/songwriter Peter Allen. As famous for his talent as for his marriage to Liza Minelli, Allen succumbed to AIDS in 1992, but his legacy lives on in this musical. Uptown will be the first theater granted regional rights to the show, which runs from July 25-August 10, 2014.
