"TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE" A LESSON IN LIVING UNTIL YOU DIE

In 2024 Mark Shanahan, the Artistic Director of the Westport Country Playhouse, saw a production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s “Tuesdays with Morrie.” adapted from Mitch Albom’s masterfully written book of the same name, performed by the Sea Dog Theater in New York City and determined to bring it to Westport. That dedicated decision is now a reality and “Tuesdays with Morrie” will star Len Cariou as Morrie and Christopher J. Domig as Mitch from Thursday, September 4 to Saturday, September 6 and the theater community is in for a most special entertainment treat, one that may change the way you live your life.

To Shanahan, Len Cariou is a force of nature and a powerful storyteller, an actor who enjoys a great comradery with Christopher J. Domig. Cariou originated the role of Sweeney Todd to great acclaim, a legendary Broadway actor who has played Shakespearian roles, musicals like A Little Night Music and tv roles like Henry Reagan in Blue Bloods. Domig is the founder of the award-winning Sea Dog Theater in New York City and has dozens of film and acting credits like Broadway Empire and Law and Order: SVU. Together they are a powerful duo tackling a difficult road map about the twists and turns of life and the stunning relationship they develop on stage. After witnessing their friendship, you may be prompted to reach out to people in your own past who mentored you and changed the course of your life.

The thought is that giving of yourself, your time and talents, to others is rewarding for both the giver and the receiver. Mark Twain is credited with saying: "the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." For Mitch Albom, that realization was brought home to him when he reconnected with a special professor at Brandeis University, Morrie Schwartz, after a sixteen year absence. His sociology teacher had been a mentor to Albom and when Albom graduated he promised to keep in touch. He didn't and the years passed. Now a chance sighting of his old friend on the Ted Koppel television show brings Mitch to Morrie's door to visit him as he battles with ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, and makes peace with his impending death.

For a poignant and meaningful conversation, seize this unique opportunity for wonderful theater by listening in on "Tuesdays with Morrie," written by Albom and Jeffrey Hatcher, and being offered at the Westport Country Playhouse. Mitch is our narrator, explaining about how his career as a jazz musician morphed into a profession as a sports writer, now housed in Detroit, and why he is flying every Tuesday to visit Morrie in his Massachusetts home.

This man whom Mitch calls "coach" is still providing life lessons, even though his thirty years as a teacher are over. As Morrie faces death, he wants Mitch to discover the wonders of love, work. aging, family, community, forgiveness and even death. His muscles may be degenerating but his mind is sharp. What starts as a one time visit of an hour quickly changes into a commitment to come every week...until the end.

Morrie poses difficult questions to Mitch: Are you at peace with yourself? Are you as human as you can be? The message is clear that every day is a gift, that's why they call it the present. Morrie posits that, like the Buddhists, there is a little bird on his shoulder that asks him every day if he is ready, ready for death. Mitch learns that the truth that when you learn how to die, that is when you learn how to live. Morrie urges Mitch to go after life and embrace it, a lesson we can all profit from adopting.

Christopher J. Domig is a wonderfully sensitive Mitch, a man who cares deeply and is open to expanding his heart in meaningful ways. Len Cariou is exceptional as the transitional professor facing the most important class in his life, and facing it with wisdom and humor and courage. We literally see his disintegration in front of us, sensing his pain and trying to hold him in a healing hug.

For tickets ($45. to 65.00), call the Westport Country Playhouse at 203-227-4477, or online at westportplayhouse.org. Performances are Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Erwin Maas directs this meaningful production, one that began as a book by Albom to pay for Morrie’s medical expenses.

Come discover, like Mitch, that without love, we're birds with broken wings and we need to forgive everyone for everything. The message is to let go of fear and grief and lead a life of kindness. You may be encouraged to find new priorities, a new path, to become a better you. Also learn what Morrie asks for as extra credit.

MARK TWAIN THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE AT THEATERWORKS HARTFORD

It’s high time you made the acquaintance of Mark Twain again. I'm sure it’s been years or even decades since you smiled in his direction. Here’s your BIG chance.

Humorist, author, lecturer, essayist, social critic and entrepreneur Samuel Clemens was best known by his pen name Mark Twain and was labeled by William Faulkner “the father of American literature.” While born in Florida, Missouri in 1835, he lived long enough in the state of Connecticut, and died here in 1910 at the age of seventy-four, to be considered an honorary Connecticut son and a true state legacy.

Seventy years ago, in 1954, actor Hal Holbrook first donned the traditional white suit that brought to mind Mark Twain. Since that iconic moment, Holbrook's and Twain's names have been synonymous. Holbrook developed his unique one-man stage show while he was in college: "Mark Twain Tonight," for which he won both a Tony and a Drama Desk Award. Ed Sullivan saw one of his early performances and gave him national exposure. He was even sent by the State Department to Europe to perform. Holbrook has done the role well over 2000 times. As he has aged with this role, one advantage was that make-up was considerably less in later days.

His home in Hartford at 351 Farmington Avenue is a tribute to the memory of this man of letters, a house he designed and built and lived in with his family for seventeen years, from 1874-1891. His beloved wife Olivia gave birth to their three daughters there, Susy, Clara and Jean. In 1927, the house was rescued from demolition and is now a fascinating place stuffed with personal memorabilia. It was here he wrote some of his best known works: “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” “Life on the Mississippi,” “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” The Mark Twain House is open Monday – Sunday 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with guided tours available to 4:15 p.m. For more information, call 860-247-0998 or online at www.MarkTwainHouse.org.

Now there is a new Mark Twain in town clad in a new trademark white suit, as Emmy-award winning actor Richard Thomas assumes this masterpiece role, with wit and wisdom, home spun philosophy and international humor, including excerpts from Twain's most memorable books, with an emphasis on the humorous ones, like "Huckleberry Finn.” Come experience the charm of Mark Twain, as he is brought to life by this talented and versatile actor, who is the only one permitted to perform this tribute to Twain.

Twain is so humble he likes to pay himself compliments. His range of conversational topics hopscotch from cannibals to denigrating politicians, lying to good hearts, Noah to Satan, ghost stories to golden arms, slavery to stretching the truth, and don’t forget the French. Twain won’t. All this is done with Thomas’s bushy eyebrows raised and a knowing wink.

Mark Twain began on the lecture circuit in 1866 when he was so nervous about speaking he asked a trio of friends to be plants in the audience to laugh. He was like a Vaudevillian, with brilliant social commentary, defining the American character. His love of theater served him well as he shared his perceptions about the world from his bottomless reservoir. This national tour for the new Mark Twain is happily beginning in Hartford, his adopted home, and will travel for 18 weeks to 48 cities, with Michael Wilson serving as creative consultant.

You will remember Thomas as John-Boy Walton, as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, on Netflix’s Ozark and most recently on Broadway in Our Town. “Mark Twain Tonight” will run at TheaterWorks Hartford, 233 Pearl Street, Hartford until Sunday, August 24. Performances are Tuesday to Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at noon and 5 p.m.,and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. For tickets ($35-55), call TWH at 860-527-7838 or online at twhartford.org. They are truly a hot ticket and selling fast.

Come absorb the down home philosophy and world wide appeal of one of Hartford’s favorite sons as you rediscover why Mark Twain is so beloved and why Richard Thomas is so wonderfully talented in bringing him so delightfully to life. Thomas first saw the production when he was 16. Now he is doing research to make it his own. Come discover for yourself how he hones this fascinating and inspiring persona who enjoyed a “beautifully messy human life:” Mark Twain.

IVORYTON PLAYHOUSE OFFERING A LOVERLY TREAT OF "MY FAIR LADY" UNTIL SEPTEMBER 7

A perfect summertime family treat, a dessert as light and frothy and rich and creamy as a strawberry parfait complete with a cherry on top, is the current magnificent production of Lerner and Loewe's classic musical comedy "My Fair Lady" originally penned more than five decades ago. The Ivoryton Playhouse's offering is perfection in its loverly way and should not be missed. Hurry to Ivoryton by Sunday, September 7 for a delicious summertime surprise.

The transformation of Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who sells violets for a tuppence in Covent Gardens, into a polished princess who is mistaken for Hungarian royalty, is a delightful tale. Claire Marie Spencer’s Eliza is superbly engaging and charming as the irrepressible Eliza, determined to improve herself under the tutelage of the demanding and controlling master of languages, Professor Henry Higgins. Higgins is played by an impressive and arrogant Trevor Martin, who takes Eliza on as a challenge, after his friend and colleague Colonel Pickering, a courtly and admirable Joseph Dellger, bets him he cannot make a lady out of a “guttersnipe."

Higgins proceeds to take this “squashed cabbage leaf” and “prisoner of the gutter” who is “condemned by every syllable she utters” and teach her to speak, act and dress properly, so perfectly that he can pass her off as a Duchess. With her opportunistic rapscallion of a father (Scott Mikita) pushing her from the rear and the professor pulling her from the front, and Eliza’s own inner determination to succeed motivating her from within, the “delicious proposal” seems assured.

Based on George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” this Lerner-Loewe version is stuffed with wonderful tunes, from “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” to “I Could Have Danced All Night” to “On the Street Where You Live” sung by Eliza’s suitor Freddie (Ben S. Daniel). Eliza’s dad charms us “With a Little Bit of Luck” and “Get Me to the Church on Time” while the professor reveals his chauvinistic tendencies in “I’m an Ordinary Man” and his tenderness in “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”

Also in the outstanding cast are two women who boost Eliza’s spirits with their support, Stacia Fernandez as Henry’s mother who doesn’t approve of her son’s manners or modes of behavior and Johanna Regan Milani as his loyal housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce. Director and choreographer Brian Feehan takes us back to London at the turn of the twentieth century in this highly entertaining musical, with a fashion parade of costumes designed by Elizabeth Saylor.

For tickets ($60 adults, seniors $55, students $25 with discount tickets for $30 if available on Thursdays at the box office) call the Ivoryton Playhouse, 103 Main Street, Ivoryton at 860-767-7318 or online at Ivorytonplayhouse.org. Performances are Wednesday at 2 p.m, Thursday 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Now is the time to make a reservation for the Summer Season AfterParty on September 13 by visiting Ivorytonplayhouse.org.

Cheer for Eliza to pick herself up out of the London gutters and polish her personality until she is the “toast” of the town, with a fine drizzle of orange marmalade on top. Don’t forget to bring her a box of chocolates!

LEGACY THEATRE OF BRANFORD SERVING UP TASTY "SWEENEY TODD" MEAT PIES

Swanson and Pillsbury and Betty Crocker are highly unlikely to be fighting over the rights to use Mrs. Lovett’s secret recipe. Mrs. Lovett’s pie business was once a flaky failure until she teamed up with a certain mad barber in London’s Fleet Street to create a sensational savory of unusual and peculiar flavor.

The Legacyy Theatre in Branford is mixing up a batch of tasty treats as it offers for your culinary and theatrical pleasure the Stephen Sondheim musical, with book by Hugh Wheeler, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" now extended to Sunday, August 31.

The barber becomes a barbarian in this passionate tale of revenge. Sweeney Todd is the alias assumed by a barber who was transported to Australia on trumped up charges almost two decades before. He blames Judge Turpin (Eric Santagata) and his liege The Beadle (Thomas Beebe) for the treachery which led his wife Lucy to kill herself and the Judge to claim their infant daughter Johanna (Ava Broneer) as his ward.

Now Todd, played with a steely determination and macabre manner by Karl Gasteyer, has returned to the scene of the crime to right the wrongs his family has suffered. With the aid of the lusty Mrs. Lovett, played delightfully by Stephanie Stiefel Williams, who runs s failed meat pie shop and a naval man Anthony (Charles Romano) who has saved Todd’s life, Todd sets his diabolical scheme in place.

Complications in the form of an old beggar woman (Sarah Anne Hughes), a blackmailer Pirelli (Amron Salgado) and a wide eyed lad Tobias (Brayden Esler) threaten his plans. Colin Sheehan directs this involving dark tale plagued with the “chill of ghostly shadows.” The musical form features an orchestra of four led by Mark Ceppetelli, magical lighting and set by Jamie Burnett, choreography by Paola Rarick and period costumes designed by Jimmy Johansmeyer. The more than thirty tunes drive the action beautifully, led by the incredible performances of the cast, led by the magical pairing of Gasteyer and Williams.

For tickets ($50.50 and $56.50) call the Legacy Theatre, 128 ThimbleIslands Road, Branford at 203-315-1901 or online at info@legacytheatrect.org or www.LegacyTheatreCT.org. Performances are Thursday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m.

Return to nineteenth century London, if you dare, but be careful to have witnesses if you go to a local barbershop for a trim or a shave or a neighborhood pub for a succulent shepherd’s pie, a savory sweet treat of dubious origin.

"LITTLE WOMEN THE MUSICAL" PRESENTED BY WISP THIS WEEKEND IN EAST HAVEN

You are cordially invited to enter the Victorian Age of Literature, courtesy of Louisa May Alcott and the Old Stone Playhouse from Friday, August 8 to Sunday, August 10. The Old Stone Congregational Church at 251 Main Street in East Haven will be festively attired, air conditioned, with cabaret seating for a meal, wheelchair accessible, with ample parking, perfect to entertain you and your family.

The heartbreak and hope of the Civil War years will be displayed with laughter and tears by Jo Marsh, the writer of the family, who has been advised by her publishers to write about what she knows and to include the stories of her sisters Beth, Meg, and Amy to add realism and romance.

In "Little Women the Musical,” with book by Allen Knee, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein and music by Jason Howland, you will find a story based on Alcott’s 1868-69 semi-autobiographical two-volume novel. The play revolves around the traditional minded Meg, the hope-to-be-successful novelist Jo, the shy and retiring Beth and the romantically inclined Amy and their home in Concord, Massassachusetts that includes their beloved mother Marmee and reflects the sad absence of their father who is serving as a chaplain in the Union Army.

Jo weaves vignettes about her melodramatic sisters into the musical telling of her publishing rejection letters, her original play “An Operatic Tragedy” she wishes to produce for Christmas joy, the difficulties Marnee has running the house in wartime, a proposed trip to Europe with Aunt March (Michelle Rocheford Johnston), romantic entanglements for Laurie (Jack Vann) and his tutor Mr. Brooke (Luke Soja) with March sisters, situations with Mr. Laurence (George McTyre), a skating race and a dance ball, Beth's tragic death and a new marriage proposal, all set to music.

WISP (Wagner Iovanna Studio Performances) will star McKensie Doebrick as Amy, Denise Wray as Meg, Heather Bazinet as Marmee, Allison Bradshaw as Jo and Lexi Kinniburgh as Beth. Producer Karen Wagner-Iovanna and director Martin Scott Marchitto are responsible for this dramatic family production stuffed with dreams, love, kindness, hope and promise for the future.

With equal friction and foolishness and fondness, the sisters exhibit a whole plethora of emotions as they grow up in a difficult time for our country, without a father near at hand or with a mother unsure of how to react to the problems of the day.

Performances are Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.. Come watch how a quartet of siblings find their voices and proclaim to the world that they are worthy of dreams coming true, finding the loves of their life and holding out for a much desired promise for tomorrow.

FLUNKING SUMMER

Clearly I am flunking summer. While in the winter months I never wear Ugg boots, all summer I don’t wear flip flops. In fact I have never worn flip flops and I am not about to start now at my advanced age.

After a terrible sunburn during my honeymoon in Puerto Rico many moons ago, I learned I am no longer a sun worshipper. You won’t find me under a shade tree or a beach umbrella anytime soon. Cape Cod, Capri and the Cape of Good Hope are no longer, regrettably,on my wish list.

On the fourth of July I couldn’t muster the strength to go to a friend's house in Milford to watch fireworks. My sadness over two different friends'funerals made watching fireworks a colorless occasion. Maybe next year.

As for barbecues, I have not yet been invited to a cookout No hotdogs, hamburgers or ribs on my paper plate. Hold the sauerkraut.

If I were to belly up to the tiki bar, there would be no margaritas or daiquiris in sight, with or without tiny umbrellas or red cherries.

Don’t bring me a beach ball, a frisbee or a pail and shovel. I don’t know anyone with a sail boat, a pontoon or even a canoe. Forget the sand castle contests and wet t-shirts are definitely a no-no.

All in all, I am keeping the cap on my suntan lotion until I reach the safety of Labor Day. Hold on to your revealing bathing suits even under wraps until I lose at least 20 pounds. For now just bring me some sweet corn on the cob with salt and lots of butter and chill the seedless watermelon. They still spell summer to me.