By Tom Nissley
There is a wonderful production, closing this weekend (so pay attention and call for tickets right now) playing in the Dressing Room Theatre at Curtain Call, where you can bring your own Pizza and wine to go with it. It’s called A JUKEBOX FOR THE ALGONQUIN.
Imagine that you’re a resident in one of our wonderful Waveny Care spaces – like the INN for instance, and you’ve located an old Wurlitzer Jukebox on eBay, and you want so hard to get it for the parlor (which you and your buddies call “the Algonquin”). Then you relive a moment in your youth when you dropped in a coin and pushed your selection and watched the record being selected and dropped onto a player and you turned to your date and whirled her around in step with the music… Wow!
The only problem is how to find the $3000 that the seller on EBAY wants to send the machine to the Placid Pines Senior Care Center in upstate New York. The solution will have you laughing and applauding…
A JUKEBOX FOR THE ALGONQUIN was written by Paul Stroili and has been beautifully directed by Lynne Colatrella. Call 203-461-6358 for tickets.
In East Haddam, at the Goodspeed Opera House (can be a long drive, but worth it) there’s a terrific production of RAGTIME – THE MUSICAL starring Michael Wordly as Coalhouse Walker Jr. It’s a vigorous production with exquisite choreography and a carefully documented story of how immigrants were treated as they arrived with great ambitions as newcomers to America. Covering space from New Rochelle to Lawrence, Mass, and the pickets in Union Square, the story delineates how the labor movement was connected to immigration and how difficult for the newcomers it often was.
When Coalhouse goes searching for his beloved Sarah at a home in New Rochelle, the action gets rough, and there are moments when you may have a few tears but you will never take your eyes away from the action on the stage.
You’ve already noticed that I recommend this significant production. Tickets at goodspeed.org.
— Tom Nissley for the Ridgelea Reports on Theatre
