FESTIVAL OF NEW MUSICALS IN GOODSPEED'S SPOTLIGHT JANUARY 16-18

If skiing, ice skating, sledding and ice fishing are not at the top of your idea of winter fun, then maybe you can be tempted to head indoors to Goodspeed’s innovative Festival of New Musicals. For the twentieth year, Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam is presenting musical theater in a grand style, Martin Luther King weekend, January 16-18, 2026 and there is no need to bundle up in scarves, mittens, ear muffs and winter boots to partake in the entertaining fun.

The temperature will be toasty and the offerings HOT! You are invited to experience a trio of brand new musicals, cabarets, seminars on educational theatrical topics and a special 20th Anniversary Festival Concert. The weekend will support the development of musical theater artists, coordinated by the Goodspeed’s Max Showalter Center for Education in Musical Theatre. If you are a lover of new creations, with a spotlight on discovering new writers and performers, this is the “testing ground" with your name in lights.

If you want to be an insider, an influencer, a front runner on the newest and the best, the excitement begins Friday, January 16 at 7:30 p.m.with “Miss Hysteria,” a true tale of a young 19th century actress, Louise Gleizes, who agrees to perform acts of hysteria, only to discover her bid for freedom comes with restraints she never anticipated. This powerful and passionate story has book and lyrics by Laura Schein and Ben Zeadman and music by Zeadman. A cabaret of Rona Siddiqui music will follow at 10 p.m.

Be sure to take your multi-vitamins on Saturday for a full day starting at 1 p.m. and night of treasures, including theatrical themed seminars, a Festival Concert, the second staged reading “F Word” by Alyssa Payne for music and lyrics with book by Sara Matin, followed by a Concert at 9:30 p.m.. Come meet Tessa, a teenager who encounters a future and a family as she ages out of the foster care system.

Sunday afternoon introduces a belly full of laughter with "Foolproof” at 1 p.m., a musical about a trio of sisters, Mo, Mary and Curly (think the Three Stooges Meet Sherlock Holmes) who need to solve a mystery and earn a reward to save the family business. With a book by Megan Loughran and Sonya Hayden and lyrics by Loughren and music by Hayden, you will become toe-tapping fools all the way to the festival's final event, a Q and A with all three sets of composers.

A variety of tickets are available by calling 860-873-8668 with single tickets for each reading ($30, students $15), cabaret ($20), and Festival Concert ($30). The Gold Package ($156) includes all three musicals, several seminars, the Concert and Meet the Writers Q and A. The Silver Package ($81) includes all three staged readings. Package can add the Friday cabaret($18) and the concert ($35), as well as the pre-show dinner at the Gelston House ($36) by going online to www.goodspeed.org. You are also invited to become a “Friend” of the Festival and take part at a special level of participation.

Musical theater students from the Hartt School and Western Connecticut State University will perform the readings and help develop the musicals. Indulge your passion for musical theater by grabbing the coat tails of this outstanding opportunity and learning first hand the latest and best insider knowledge available. Enjoy!

WATERBURY'S PALACE THEATER HAS A MYSTERY "CLUE" JUST FOR YOU

Have you dreamed of being Sherlock Holmes , a mastermind who can interpret clues, examine evidence and discover who committed the crime? Maybe you just enjoy playing parlor games at parties and being declared the winner? Perhaps you enjoy reading mystery stories and identifying the “whodunit” first and the how and the why?

If any of these clues intrigue you, then grab your magnifying glass and fingerprint powder and run over to Waterbury’s Palace Theater tonight, tomorrow and Thursday, December 16, 17 and 18 for a rousing production of “CLUE” at 7:30 p.m. each night.

Once a favorite Hasbro game, based on a 1985 Paramount motion picture, “CLUE” will excite and delight you as you try to discover whether it's Mrs. White, Miss Scarlet, Mrs.Peacock, Yvette or the Cook with a candlestick, or a rope, or revolver or maybe it's Colonel Mustard, Mr. Boddy, Mr. Green, Professor Plum or even the Cop with a knife, lead pipe, or wrench. Surely the game is afoot.

Six murders, ten suspects, one spooky mansion, an invitation to a dinner party, bodies galore, accusers and victims, oh, my! Any idea who will be next? Does confusion or clarity reign supreme? Where will the crimes take place? In the library or the study? With a revolver or a rope? You may just die laughing.

For tickets ($63-105), call the Palace Theater, 100 East Main Street, Waterbury at 203-346-2000 or online at palacetheaterct.org.,?p>

Come play the game, mingle over dinner, beware of the blackmailer. solve the crimes and just keep your head on your shoulders. Experience ”CLUE!"

WESTPORT COUNTRY PLAYHOUSE DELIGHTS AGAIN WITH "A SHERLOCK CAROL"

If you are a lover of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and of your favorite curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge as well as a fervent fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic detective Sherlock Holmes, then Mark Shanahan has just the perfect Christmas present for you! For the third year in a row, Shanahan, the Artistic Director of the Westport Country Playhouse is offering up a new look at your favorite holiday characters in “A Sherlock Carol,” until Sunday, December 21 billed as a "Dickens of a Holiday Mystery!” You are invited to follow the intriguing clues and help a complicated and confused Holmes attempt to solve who killed Ebenezer Scrooge! Grab your magnifying glass and deerstalker cap and follow Holmes to the intriguing solution... if you dare.

Mark Shanahan has penned a tall tale of Sherlock Holmes, detective extraordinaire, and the mean and greedy Scrooge, into one delightful production. What a coincidence… Holmes and Scrooge's stories both begin with a death in the first line: “Marley was dead to begin with” and “Moriarty was dead to begin with.” Both men are clearly dead as a doornail and will stay so until Sunday, December 21.

The similarities don’t end there. No Sir! The major figures in “A Christmas Carol” and the volumes starring Holmes like Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Dr. Watson, Cratchit, The Fezziwigs, Mrs. Dilber and a few others pay visits to Sherlock Holmes and continue their journeys in a new place, a place where dastardly deeds may just happen.

Kudos to Mr. Shanahan and Westport Country Playhouse who opened this novel literary door to 221B Baker Street, London where a skeptical and doubting Sherlock (James Taylor Odom) finds himself in a most haunting of ghost tales, especially when he firmly believes there are no such creatures as spirits. Once again it’s Christmas Eve and our old friend Tiny Tim, now all grown up, shows up at Sherlock Holmes’s house to beg the great detective to solve a peculiar murder: the death of Ebenezer Scrooge (Byron St. Cyr). Will the ghosts of past, present and future appear? Of course!

What do you get when you combine a mystery with some ghosts and a heartwarming family holiday story? Just ask writer and director Mark Shanahan. To Shanahan, Charles Dickens wrote the best ghost story ever, calling it "astounding.” He combined that love with an admiration for the old Basil Rathbone movies starring that great detective Sherlock Holmes that his dad took him to when he was a child growing up in New York’s East Village.

Fortuitiousely, he has mixed these two favorite characters together into a holiday play for the whole family to enjoy, ages 7 and up. He likens it to "a dinner party, inviting friends from different social circles…and hoping like heck they’d get along.” To that end, he has placed these iconic characters by Doyle and Dickens in a new inventive stage mystery.

Come see such unique innovations as a talking door knocker, the spooky elements that resonate throughout, a reimagined holiday classic, a murder mystery set in London in 1894, the deaths of two famous characters like Holmes’ great enemy Professor James Moriarty and, unexpectedly, Ebenezer Scrooge. Can Holmes follow the clues to find the dastardly perpetrator or is he doomed to become the town's new miser himself? How will a grown-up Tiny Tim, now a doctor and Scrooge’s benefactor, influence the outcome? Come meet Joe Delafield as Dr. Watson and others, Dan Domingues as Cratchit and others, Alexandra Kopek as the Countess and others and Anissa Felix as Emma Wiggins and others.

Also playing a huge part in writing the play, Shanahan was intrigued by the mission of Paul Newman’s The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp created in Ashford, Connecticut in 1988 to serve children with serious illnesses. Newman established a special place, a wonderful and free camping experience that is now in many places around the world. Donations to the camp and to the Westport Home with Hope food pantry drive will be benefactors from the production. Patrons are also encouraged to take a photo in the lobby at Sherlock Holmes' house, 221B Baker Street, London.

Shanahan was inspired to envision Tiny Tim as “someone with a little help from a certain benefactor, who battled illness and went on to help others do the same. Just like Scrooge did, we can all keep Christmas in our hearts throughout the year by donating to these remarkable organizations.”

For tickets ($50 and up, students call the box office for discounted tickets $20), call the Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court, Westport, off route 1 at 203-227-4177 or online at www.westportplayhouse.org. Performances are Wednesday-Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.and Sunday at 3 p.m.

Bring the family to the Westport Country Playhouse for a novel look at two classic tales with all the mystery and magic that the Christmas holiday demands.

GHOSTS ARE FLYING AGAIN AT HARTFORD STAGE'S "A CHRISTMAS CAROL"

For the 25th year, the Hartford Stage is presenting “A Christmas Carol-A Ghost Story of Christmas” until Sunday, December 28. The cantankerous and mean spirited Scrooge makes a mighty redemption after he is visited by his old business partner Jacob Marley (Noble Shropshire) and three ghosts. Guiesseppe Jones is the grand Bah Humbug disbeliever in Christmas. Just in time for the holiday feast, he learns to mend his ways and open his heart to goodness.

For Scrooge, the transition is not easy. He has spent his whole life worshipping money and increasing his bank accounts. He has had no time for friends or family. He has neglected his nephew Fred’s (Erik Bloomquist) invitations for dinners, he has abused the good efforts of his employee Bob Cratchit (Patrick O’Konis) to work efficiently, taken no heed of Bob’s poor family and his ill son Tiny Tim (Theodore “Teddy” Curren or James Salvo), and allowed Belle (Leslie Blake Walker) to abandon his love.

In addition, Scrooge has no empathy for the trio of people who are indebted to him: Bettye Pidgeon, (Rebecka Jones), the doll vendor, who appears to Scrooge at 1 a.m. as the Spirit of Christmas Past, Bert, the fruit and cider vendor, (Stuart Rider), who appears to the curmudgeon at 2 a.m. as the Spirit of Christmas Present and Mr. Marvel, a watchworks vendor, (Daniel Madigan), who is the Spirit of Christmas Future at 3 a.m.

As Scrooge watches the memories of his past unfold before him, like Jacob Marley (Noble Shropshire) his business partner in life, dead lo these seven years, Mr. Fezziwig (Kenneth De Abrew), his old boss, and his favorite housekeeper (Noble Shropshire) who prepares his morning porridge, Ebenezer begins to realize all that he has missed in his greedy life. Meanwhile ghosts fly hither and yon bringing him a message that he has wasted his time and needs to repent.

With Jacob Marley’s warning ringing in his ears, Scrooge takes a turn to embrace humanity and celebrate all the goodness in life he has ignored. Fortunately for him, it is not too late to mend his ways and embrace all that he has missed. Kudos to Michael Wilson for adapting and directing his beautiful and meaningful tale once again.

For tickets, call the Hartford Stage, 50 Church Street, Hartford at 860-527-5151 or online at hartfordstage.org. Performances are Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 7:30 p.m.,Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. as well as Monday, December 22 at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, December 23 at 7:30 p.m.,Wednesday , December 24 at 2 p.m., Friday, December 26 at 7:30 p.m.,Saturday the 27 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, December 28 at 2 p.m.

What would the holidays be without a revisit to Ebenezer Scrooge and watch him reclaim his place with his fellow citizens and be a good member of the human race. Savor the flavor of his now generous state of mind and heart.

LOOK TO THE HEAVENS FOR "GAYS IN SPACE" FOR HOLIDAY ADVENTURES

The Connecticut Gay Mens chorus has always been “out of this world” with heavenly and angelic voices that are mighty and powerful. This year is no exception. Their latest concerts are crowned Holiday Adventures and they are truly “Gays in Space.” You have a quartet of opportunities to make these great guys your guides to other worlds: Saturday, December 13 at 8:30 p.m., and Sunday, December 14 at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. , all at the Katharine Hepburn Theatre in Old Saybrook and Friday, December 19 at the Downtown Cabaret Theater in Bridgeport at 7:30 p.m.

Hop aboard your space ship and travel to other galaxies for musical adventures of the Christmas kind. Note your blast off times and don’t be late for lift off. What would the holidays be without an interplanetary visit from these gentlemen clad in glittering silver uniforms ready to light up the skies with sparkle and starlight.

Hold on tight for zero-gravity will be employed and you will surely be floating to distant places and planets in a dizzying array of cosmic creativity. Leave it to Chorus Director Greg McMahan to steer you to the finest of holiday festivity.

Whether you are ready for a snowball fight where gravity plays a part or prefer a cup of hot chocolate by the fireplace, these stellar men are ready to light up your Christmas trees from the tinsel to the shining star on top. Word is it that all three concerts are sold out but check with thekate.org or the Kate box office at 860-510-0453 to see if any $42 tickets remain for the Kate or one at the Downtown Cabaret at 203-576-1636.

The countdown is in progress for a spectacular space odyssey to celebrate the season. Outer space has never been as festive and gay.

GALLOP TO THE BUSHNELL FOR A ROUSING ADVENTURE IN "SPAMALOT"

For serious drama about King Arthur and his legendary Knights of the Round Table, historically accurate and brimming with authenticity, then you’re looking under the wrong toadstool in the forest. “SPAMALOT” is definitely not the show for you.

If,however, you’re a fan of Monty Python and you enjoy spoof and farce and laughter, then get in line at Hartford’s Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts for some super silly stuff about killer rabbits, flying cows, the feet of God, showgirls and a quest for the Holy Grail until Sunday, December 14.

Monty Python is not a person but a troupe of six comedians - John Cleese, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliamo and Eric Idle - who in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s had a popular TV show in Britain and did comic sketches. "Monty Python’s SPAMALOT” was made into a best selling musical from the film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” with a book by Eric Idle, score by Eric Idle and John Du Prez.

Characters of note in the play include King Arthur, the Lady of the Lake, Sir Dennis, Sir Lancelot , Patsy, Sir Robin, Prince Herbert and Sir Bedevere . At the regal head of the cast are King Arthur and the Lady of the Lake. Legendary tunes include “Not Dead Yet,” “Knights of the Round Table,” “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” “Brave Sir Robin,” “The Song That Goes Like This” and “Find Your Grail.” Overacting becomes an art form in this 2005 Tony Award winning show for Best Musical.

If you are aspiring to be one of King Arthur’s courageous knights, then don’t pay any attention to what you see on stage. Chivalry may well be dead because it is overwhelmed with laughter.

The great adventure leads the merry lot to the taunting of the French at a castle and a giant wooden rabbit, to the dangers of the forest and the need for new shrubbery, to the unusual chambers of Prince Herbert and an encounter with a killer rabbit who guards the secret of the Holy Grail’s location. Through it all, the infectious merriment will enchant you.

For tickets ($36-150.50), call the Bushnell Theatre, 166 Capital Avenue, Hartford at 860-987-5900 or online at www. bushnell.org. Performances are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

Gallop along with King Arthur and his merry band of followers, to the rhythmic tune of clomping coconut shells, as they memorably, mischievously and musically set off on their classic quest for fun, fortune and fame.

PANTOCHINO PRODUCTIONS OFFERS NEW CHRISTMAS MUSICAL "WELCOME TO SANTA CLAUS"

It is doubtful that anyone would geographically confuse Venice, Florida with Venice, Italy. They are oceans apart and vastly different in culture and atmosphere. The situation is quite different, however, if you were headed for Santa Claus, Ohio and ended up instead in Santa Claus, Indiana. To discover what chaos that would cause, hop on over to the Milford’s Arts Council, The MAC, at the Milford Train Station weekends until Sunday, December 21 for Pantochino Productions' new and original offering for the holidays “Welcome to SANTA CLAUS.” With book and lyrics by Bert Bernardi, music by Justin Rugg, and colorful costuming by Jimmy Johansmeyer, you are invited to celebrate the holidays with this entertaining musical that proves location, location, location is surprisingly important when you are referring to the home of Christmas’s favorite fellow.

The narrator of the tale is the all-knowing town clerk. a spunky and sweet Lia Jade as Christy Winters who explains that the town of Santa Claus, Ohio once was cursed by a terrible name that had to be changed. Now with a moniker like Santa Claus, Christmas can be celebrated every day of the year and all the townspeople can run stores that sell fudge and twinkle lights, fancy candles and festive fashions. Dressed in a symphony of red, green and gold, the happy citizens love their life and the merriment and joy it brings. They could sing “Welcome to Santa Claus” every day of the year, all year long.

Their snow globe bubble of joy is turned upside down when a shady lawyer Dash Dawson (Justin Rugg) orders the town to cease and desist calling themselves Santa Claus, Ohio because his town is Santa Claus, Indiana and is the rightful location of the great bearded man himself. While the mayor (Jimmy Johansmeyer) and his wife (Shelley Marsh Poggio) protest, with a chorus of citizens led by Tanner Tallson (Killian Meehan), Paulette Plumb (Katie Durham), Harriet Tofflemeyer (Rachelle Ianniello), Rhonda LaRhonde (Tracey Marble), Holly Hopewell (Marlena Ascher), Ivy Inges (Brenna Murphy), Meldrum Millward (Quinn Fitzgerald), Bing (Aurora Hinden), and Crosby (Davis Burke). It’s only when Old Lady Pine (Valerie Loomis) and Old Man Pine (George Spelvin) appear that the town is truly saved.

For tickets, go online to www.pantochino.com. The performances are at the MAC, 40 Railroad Avenue, Milford. Tickets are not sold at the door. Performances are Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Remember this is cabaret so bring snacks and drinks to share.

Let Pantochino Productions give you a musical mystery to solve for a Christmas treat to make sure Santa Claus knows exactly where he lives.