"Glimpses of the Moon" is a new Jazz Age musical based on the novel by Edith Wharton, which will open MetroStage’s 2010-11 season next week. MetroStage has become known for its small-scale musicals (we leave the epics to other theatres that have larger dressing rooms!). "Glimpses of the Moon," which played in a cabaret space in New York last year (if you consider the Oak Room of the famous Algonquin Hotel a cabaret space), will leap onto our main stage here in the north end of Old Town with a fabulous cast from Washington and New York, beautiful music and original choreography. Producing new work, especially musicals, and giving them a life beyond the written page, is one of MetroStage’s primary missions. Book and lyrics writer, Tajlei Levis, and composer, John Mercurio, will be here from New York to witness this next stage for their new work, as well as the original New York producers and potential producers for the future. The MetroStage season will be opening with great anticipation and excitement as well as great possibilities for a future life for this lovely new musical.
Every regional theatre in the country has a distinctive personality and mission. MetroStage is a small, intimate theatre with a unique configuration that brings the audience and the actor together for a powerful, oftentimes exhilarating, theatrical experience. By presenting an eclectic season the audience will experience a sparkling romantic musical depicting life in the 1920’s, followed by an uproarious Broadway parody of the classic holiday show, Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol," entitled "A Broadway Christmas Carol." MetroStage has had great fun with Broadway parodies in the past in the form of "Musical of Musicals (The Musical!)", which was a parody of five Broadway composers. "A Broadway Christmas Carol" will feature two of our actors from "Musical of Musicals," Donna Migliaccio (who was most recently seen on Broadway in "Ragtime") and Matt Anderson (who will have just been seen in "Glimpses of the Moon," playing the playboy Winthrop Stefford and will now be playing All Characters who are not Scrooge!)
In 2011 we will open with "His Eye is on the Sparrow," a bio musical about the life of Ethel Waters, starring MetroStage favorite Bernardine Mitchell ("Mahalia" and "Three Sistahs"). This will be followed by a classic Tom Stoppard farce, "The Real Inspector Hound," starring the three actors who appeared in "Heroes" last year and won the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Ensemble.
This apparently is the year of the classic. As I write this description of the MetroStage offerings this season, I realize that the shows are all classics in their own individual, inimitable way. A classic writer famous for her social commentaries of the leisure class in the 1920s; the holiday classic with the most classic of familiar Broadway show tunes; the classic, legendary singer from the first half of the 20th century singing blues, jazz and gospel standards; and a classic Stoppard farce that is a send up of the classic Agatha Christie mystery — all are classics and will offer the audience a broad range of unique theatrical experiences.