Johnna Leary - Page 5

You've heard of the eternal struggle to win back your ex, to find"Mr. Right" or that a man and woman can never be "just friends". But, what if all the relationship advice you've ever heard...... is totally wrong? I Love You Because, a new Off-Broadway musical about modern relationships, will debut this Saturday at the Washington County Playhouse in Hagerstown, MD as the area premiere of the production.

In a mystery show featuring the murder and intrigue of Sherlock Holmes, normally actors would expect a theatrical death onstage......but not the murder of an actual cast member! Directed by Susan Thornton, Postmortem premieres this Friday, Oct. 17 at the Old Opera House in Charles Town, WV.

Just in time for Halloween, Hagerstown Hub Opera will present the classic children's fairy tale Hansel and Gretel on October 4 and 5, featuring an enchanted forest, magical creatures and, of course, a wicked witch!

How can you prove to the people you love that your work is your own, when you can't even be sure of your own sanity? This is one of the key dramatic issues in the Potomac Playmaker's production of David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize winning drama, Proof, directed by Barb McCormick and premiering Friday, September 26 at the Hagerstown Women's Club.

"Do You Hear the People Sing?" Then come join the revolution as Les Miserables opens at the Apollo Civic Theater in Martinsburg, WV this Friday. Co-directed by Bob LeBlanc and Jennifer Noll and musically directed by Jeff Poland, this epic musical about one man's quest for redemption during the July student revolution of 1832 will premiere live on stage.

Come spend a delightful "Weekend in the Country" when A Little Night Music opens at the Old Opera House in Charles Town, WV this Friday, September 5. Directed by David Porterfield and musically directed by Alison Shafer, Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music portrays various relationships between amorous actress Desiree Armfeldt, her old flame Frrederick and her current lover, the Count Carl-Magnus. Both men are married, one to an innocent child-bride and the other to a witty wife. Desiree also has a child, currently being raised by her sharp-tongued grandmother, while Desiree is occupied touring in a traveling play. Relationships are renewed and old flames spark when all of the characters are invited to the Armfeldt estate for the weekend.

Everyone usually enjoys a nice evening of food, wine..... and solving a murder case! Vintage Murder, an interactive and improvisational murder mystery, will premiere September 6 at the Knob Hall Winery. Produced by the Potomac Playmakers organization of Hagerstown, MD, Vintage Murder will provide many new occasions for the theatrical organization, such as a new location and new type of production.

Even though the language and settings may have changed over centuries, one situation remains true: romantic relationships are often complicated over simple matters. In the Robinwood Players production of the Shakespearean comedy Much Ado About Nothing, directed by David Dull and running through August 3 at Hagerstown Community College, actors were introduced to the universal themes of love and relationships.

Written by Bruce Graham and directed by Ed Herendeen, North of the Boulevard is an enjoyable modern-day comedy with enough undertones of familial dysfunction and economic inequality to make the humor hit a little too close to home for many viewers. North of the Boulevard focuses on one evening near Christmas in a small time auto mechanic garage. Trip, Bear and Larry all work at typical middle-class jobs while Larry's father, Zee, is retired and generally acts as the elderly pain-in-the-ass around the shop. The four male friends get together, as usual, to discuss day-to-day lives and jobs and dream about easier lives with more money, where they could move to a nice neighborhood north of the boulevard. When tragedy strikes, the characters are faced with a gigantic moral dilemma, pushing each man to his ethical limit and showing how much greed, corruption and the prospect of one hundred grand can change both a friendship and a life.

Written by Christina Anderson and directed by Lucie Tiberghien, the World Premiere production of The Ashes Under Gait City displays an age-old conflict through the modern lens of our reliance on social media technology.

For a show heavily focusing on artificial intelligence and technology, Thomas Gibbon's Uncanny Valley displays a genuine feature of human emotion. Directed by Thomas Dugdale and set in the "not-distant future", Uncanny Valley portrays the relationship between retiring neuro-scientist Claire (Barbara Kingsley) and an artificial intelligence being named Julian (Alex Podulke). Claire teaches Julian how to speak, think and act like a human to blend into society, but when Julian unlocks some emotional and ethical questions, the creation ends up teaching his creator about life.

Though featuring excellent individual performances by talented actors and spectacular lighting and special effects, One Night suffers from a confusing script, two dimensional characters and dragging pace.

Hospice care and cancer are not generally topics which leave audiences roaring with laughter. However, in the world-premiere comedy Dead and Breathing, written by Chisa Hutchinson and directed by Kristin Horton, audiences are left in stitches as a sharp tongued and sickly elderly woman cajoles, bribes, threatens and tries any possible way to force her in-home nurse to comply with assisted suicide.

Most people have heard the usual jokes about some senators being so old, they are practically dead in office. But what if your local senator running for re-election actually was dead? Welcome to the wacky, woeful dilemma in Lying in State, a comedy by David C. Hyer, directed by Jeff Czerbinski and assistant directed by Seth Thompson, premiering this Friday at the Washington County Playhouse in Hagerstown, MD. "This show is the most fun audiences will ever have at a funeral home! Our director has assembled some of the most naturally comic actors and tuned their deliveries to highest levels in order to elicit genuine guffaws of laughter from the audience!" said Jeff Leinbach, who plays Fred.

If the summer heat is already too hot for you, come cool off in Grace's Diner when the Potomac Playmakers present Bus Stop this weekend in Hagerstown, MD. Five travelers are stranded in a roadside diner during a howling blizzard in 1955 in Kansas, and as the temperature drops, tensions and passions rise between the various characters in William Inge's comedic classic.

The New Voice Play Festival, opening on June 20 at the Old Opera House in Charles Town, WV,, provides the opportunity for audiences to witness completely new and original plays from playwrights all across the nation and vote on which play is their favorite. The four plays chosen this year cover a broad emotional spectrum, dealing with subjects varying from how to spend your last 24 hours on earth to dysfunctional families to plumber's posteriors.

Though it's only June, if you're already tired of glittering summer stock musicals and comedy productions, a definite change of pace is available in Hagerstown beginning June 13. Caligula, a tragedy, will mark the debut production of The Student Stage Actors Guild in Hagerstown, MD at the Academy Theater.

The Hagerstown Hub Opera production of one of Mozart's most famous operas, The Marriage of Figaro, is an enjoyable way to spend an evening, providing audiences with gorgeous music and vocals and very clever caricatures of the well known opera buffa stereotypes.

Theaters in West Virginia this summer will offer a much more contemporary and controversial offering of new plays. However, traditional blockbuster summer stock musicals will still be readily available in any number of summer theater seasons in the state. The top three summer theater seasons and events from West Virginia are listed below, but are only a small offering of the many fantastic performances and live theater seasons occurring in West Virginia this summer.

Most people have watched all of the great prison escape movies or heard the unbelievable stories about prison breakouts. But what about a prison that is so fantastic, people try to break INTO it, and none of the prisoners want to leave? In the new Jay Huling comedy The Sing Sing Suite, premiering this Saturday at the Washington County Playhouse, the playwright explores a new idea for an original comedy which came from a usual fact of life.