Comedies and musicals are opening in theaters around and beyond the Wasatch Front this week, including a series of fund-raisers geared to helping send the Falling Skys Theatre Company to Poland for an international drama festival (see story on this page).
- THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES, John Guare's hit off-Broadway comedy, will be presented by the Westminster Players for four performances March 23-26, in the Jay W. Lees Courage Theatre of the Jewett Center for the Performing Arts, 1250 E. 1700 South.Directed by Tamara Compton, Westminster College theater professor, Guare's award-winning play is somewhere between off-the-wall and bizarre.
Here's the gist of the free-wheeling plot: A middle-aged New York zoo attendant has dreams of being a songwriter. On the day the pope is making his first visit to New York, the songwriter's mistress talks him into calling an old friend, now a Hollywood producer, for a job writing music for films.
Meanwhile, the songwriter's AWOL son comes home carrying a bomb, with which he intends to blow up Yankee Stadium - and the pope. The songwriter calls to have his crazy wife taken away, and three sightseeing nuns drop in from the roof.
It's that kind of a day.
The cast includes Keely Baisden, Mandie Caraway, Britt Fekete, Daisy Lee, Lindsay Malachek, Jim Martin, Brian Pilling, J. Chris Robertson, Stephanie Tobey, Becky Winston and John Welsh.
"The House of Blue Leaves" won the Critics Award and the Off-Broadway Obie Award in 1971 as Best American Play. It was revived in in 1986 on Broadway.
Guare is probably best known for his recent hit play and film "Six Degrees of Separation."
Performances will be at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday ant at 7 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.
There will be a concert of original songs and other music by Linda and Chris Quinn in the Jewett Center lobby a half hour prior to curtain.
- THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE, Gilbert & Sullivan's beloved operetta, will play March 23 through April 3 at the Draper Theater.
Directed by Kathryn England and choreographed by Claire Spencer, the cast includes Stephanie Adamson, Richard D. Alsop, Corene Heaps, G. Ray Jensen and John Schneider.
Performances will be 7 p.m. March 24, 25, 27 and 31 and April 1 and 3. For reservations, call 572-4144.
- EVITA, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's international hit and award-winning musical about the meteoric life and times of Argentina's legendary Eva Peron, will make a bus-and-truck stop on Saturday, March 25, at 8 p.m. at the Val A. Browning Center for the Performing Arts in Ogden.
The touring show features Kerri Jill Garbis as Eva, Jonathan J. Clark as Che and Christopher Hensel as Juan Peron.
Some of the show's best songs include "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina," "Oh, What a Circus" and "And the Money Kept Rolling In."
Tickets (which are going fast) are priced from $10 to $35. They're available in advance from the Dee Events Center box office at Weber State University (626-8500).
- INTO THE WOODS, a sometimes-irreverent musical look at our favorite fairy tales - and how they really might have turned out - will open Friday, March 24, at 7:30 p.m. on the Pardoe Theatre stage at Brigham Young University's Harris Fine Arts Center.
David Morgan directs the James Lapine-Stephen Sondheim Broadway hit. Performances will continue Tuesdays through Saturdays through April 8, at 7:30 p.m. with a 4 p.m. matinee April 3, and half-price preview performances March 22 and 23.
Tickets at $7 for students and faculty, $8 for seniors and alumni and $9 for the general public are available at the Fine Arts Ticket Office, 378-4322.
The opening night performance of "Into the Woods" is part of the gala 30th anniversary celebration of the Harris Fine Arts Center, home of the BYU theater and film department.
- I HATE HAMLET, Paul Rudnick's play about a young New York actor moving into an apartment formerly occupied by the late John Barrymore, will play Thursdays through Saturdays, March 23-25 and March 30-April 1 in the Southern Utah University Auditorium Mainstage Theatre in Cedar City.
Directed by Sandra K. Siglinski, performances will be at 7:30 p.m., with one matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 1.
For reservations, call the SUU box office at 586-7876.