Ned Donovan - Ithaca ‘12

Last week my mother, Nicole, and I went up to the Maine State Music Theatre to see the preview night of their new show “Crazy For You”.  As always, I loved what I saw at MSMT.  Now the first thing that will get said to me by anyone who was also there was that the Technical aspects were a mess.  Yes, this is true, but there were a lot of them, and preview is not opening, it’s essentially dress rehearsal people pay to come see.  The tech issues happened, the show moved on, from what I hear from other people who have seen the show since, they have worked out most if not all of the kinks, and I still enjoyed myself despite them.

Tony Yazbeck is a god.  That’s really all there is to it, he takes the show, makes it his own, and truly shines on this stage.  As Bobby Child/imitation Bela Zangler is hilarious, fun, and boy can the guy dance!  His real-life fiancée Jessica Lee Goldyn plays the romantic lead Polly Baker.  Together they take the show under their wing and guide it through a night of singing, dancing, hilarity, and Gershwin music!  Oh did I mention that they were Al and Val respectively in the broadway revival of A Chorus Line?

It’s the song that rings in most aspiring musical theatre performers.  ”God I hope I get it! I hope I get it! How many people does he need?”  That number from A Chorus Line accurately sums up the feelings most people have at an audition.  How many times have you heard a cabaret group do the song “One”?  I can say I’ve heard it a lot.  Every Little Step is a documentary following the audition process of the 2005 revival of A Chorus Line on broadway.  They take you from day one, to shots from the performances, complete with callbacks, and rejections; laughs, and tears; and thrilling moments of exultation all the way to moments of bone-crushing defeat.

It also tells the tale of the coming about of A Chorus Line, when Michael Bennett sat 24 dancers down in a circle, and they had a 12 hour talk session where everyone told their stories.  It was captured with a reel to reel recorder (I believe the recordings are in the archives at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts) and from those conversations a show was born.

Hey everyone,

So I have concluded my one-day run of A Year With Frog and Toad at the Maine State Music Theater.  As is such I have been coming to grips with that my theatrical side will have to be sedated until I reach Ithaca again.  This is not 100% true, I’ll be performing with Anthony’s Italian Kitchen Dinner Theatre on saturday nights for July and August…but I won’t be a part of a show for a while now.  During my time with MSMT and while I searched for a job, one of the things that fell by the wayside for me was dancing.  The last dance class I took until recently was my Ballet final at school.  I’m making a conscious decision to change that now.  I’ll be taking four or five classes a week between three different schools of dance in Portland.  I’ll be taking a ballet class through Portland Ballet Company; tap, jazz, and ballet at Casco Bay Movers; and a ballet/jazz fusion class through Vivid Motion.  This hopefully will sedate my theatrical side for the next couple months, as well as get me back on track to being in shape.

Hey everyone,

So last night my mother and I went up to Brunswick to see the opening night of the Maine State Music Theater season with The Light in the Piazza.  This is a show which NY Times called “the most romantic score of any Broadway Musical since West Side Story”.  MSMT’s production certainly lives up to that statement with a beautiful orchestra directed by Edward Reichert, professor at the University of Southern Maine.  He brings Adam Guettel’s beautiful score to life just through the harp-driven melodies.  (Coincidentally, Ed was my vocal coach all through high school, and currently is the vocal coach for the Musical Theatre students at USM.)  Also in the pit is my friend Shannon Allen who played Cello 1 for my production of The Last Five Years in May 2008.  I have to say, that this is one of the most complete casts I’ve ever seen at MSMT.  Usually MSMT never has a weak link in the cast, but in this production especially, no one is overly outshined by another actor.

The musical takes place in the summer of 1953 in the Italian city of Florence (there is one scene in Rome, and a few phone calls to America).

Hi everyone,

So I have been in rehearsals for the past few weeks for A Year with Frog and Toad at the Maine State Music Theater in Brunswick Maine.  Myself, three other local performers, and four of the performance interns at MSMT have been working to get the show up and running.  

The cast includes: Brian Kess (University of Minnesota Duluth ‘10) as Frog, Matt Geller (University of Northern Kentucky ‘10) as Toad, Ephie Aardema (Circle in the Square ‘09) as a Bird/Mole, Kaitlyn Johnson (Muhlenberg College ‘08) as Bird/Mole, Joe Valliere (University of Southern Maine ‘10) as Bird/Mole, Ned Donovan (Ithaca College ‘12) as Snail, and local Middle School standouts Rebekah and Blair as Mouse/Squirrel, and Turtle/Squirrel respectively.  The whole thing is directed by Connie Shafer and Music Directed by Sam Bagala.  

This adorable and fun show follows Frog and Toad from the day the wake up from hibernation, through the four seasons until the day they go back to sleep.  Over the course of the year they break clocks, talk about mail, go swimming (where all the animals find out that “Toad looks funny in a bathing suit”), bake Cookies, go sledding, and more.  

The show is fun, quirky, and is sure to be a hit in the children’s show line-up this summer at MSMT.