Drama, Music & Comedy Will All Be Part Of

Seven Angels Theatre’s 20th Anniversary Season

WATERBURY — Seven Angels Artistic Director Semina De Laurentis has announced a very special season celebrating the theater’s 20th anniversary.

“This season you’ll be delighted by the variety of music, comedy and drama we have to offer,” said Ms De Laurentis. “There is something to delight everyone.” Here are just

Highlights of the new season include a world premier of The Mad Bomber, a story based  the local connection to a major event in  the 1950s; The Marvelous Wonderettes, starring Waterbury’s own Marissa Perry who stared in Hairspray on Broadway; and R. Bruce Connelly will return in the Tony Award winning Broadway comedy hit Boeing Boeing.

Seven Angels has also continues to offer plenty of value with special food and drink nights, including wine and martini nights, Fascia’s Chocolate night, mimosa matinee and Sundaes on Sunday. A special subscription package is available for those age 30 and under (five mainstage shows for $50), and discounted 2010-11 Early Bird Season subscriptions, starting at $99, are available though September 27.

Season details are as follows: Roger Bean’s The  Marvelous Wonderettes will open the season, September 30-October 24. A Connecticut premiere, Betty Jean, Cindy Lou, Missy and Suzy are four girls with hopes and dreams as big as their crinoline skirts and voices to match. As they unite to entertain at their high school prom audiences will be treated to such classic 50s and 60s songs as  “Dream Lover,” “Mr Sandman,” “Lipstick on Your Collar,” “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me,” “It’s In His Kiss ” and many more.

The Devil’s Music: The Life and Times of Bessie Smith (book by Angelo Parra, musical direction by Miche Braden; conceived by Joe Brancato) will be next, running November 4-28.

It’s 1937 and the final performance of Bessie, as the fiesty singer regales her audience with tales from her life, and many loves and losses. Miche Braden not only captures the soulful richness of the singing style of the “Empress of the Blues” and one of the greatest singers of her era, but the essence of her boozy, feisty personality.

The Tony Award-winning Boeing Boeing, by Marc Camoletti and adapted by Beverley Cross, will open spring with a production to run March 17-April 10.

Bernard, a self styled lothario living in Paris, has French, German and American fiancées, each beautiful airline hostesses with frequent layovers. He keeps “one up, one down and one pending” until unexpected schedule changes bring all three to Paris and Bernard’s apartment at the same time. With the help of his boyhood friend, Robert, newly arrived from Wisconsin, and Berthe, his catty existentialist maid, hilarity ensues.

Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine will bring Julia Kiley (The Irish and How They Got That Way,  Anything Goes) back to the Seven Angels stage, April 28-May 28, for an actors’ tour de force about an ordinary housewife who sets out on an extraordinary journey.

As Shirley prepares dinner for her husband, she ruminates on her life and an invitation from a girlfriend to join her on holiday in Greece to search for romance and adventure – an adventure full of laughter and heart, transformational and timeless.

The season finale, running June 2-25, will be the world premier of The Mad Bomber (book and lyrics by Charles Monagan, music by Richard DeRosa).

In 1957, a media frenzy over a series of bombings in New York City led to a quiet street in Waterbury. Mad Bomber is a vibrant, riotous tale of two cities — set to music — of cops, politicians and tabloid reporters, and ultimately the triumph of hope and love (and justice) over a terrorist’s master plan.

Seven Angels Theatre is Greater Waterbury’s only Equity professional regional theatre. It is located in the Historic Hamilton Park Pavilion on Plank Road in Waterbury, minutes off I-84. Parking is free and the theater is wheelchair accessible.