Coronado Playhouse’s Family Affair Season
presents
FOLLIES
In Concert
Concert & Cabaret Series
AUGUST 31-SEPTEMBER 2, 2018
Coronado Playhouse concludes its 2018 Concert and Cabaret Series-celebrating great American composer/lyricists-with Follies: in concert, opening Friday, August 31st playing for three performances until Sunday, September 2nd, 2018 at Coronado Playhouse.
Set in a decaying theatre on the eve of its demolishing, Follies centers on a reunion of former follies girls, 30 years after their final performance. Invited by their producer, Dimitri Weismann (a fictional Zeigfield), they reunite to relive their past, to see if they can still perform their old numbers, to rehash old wounds and to realize regrets, all the while with the ghosts of their younger selves shadowing the proceedings. Brilliantly intermingling the past and the present, Follies depicts a profound theme: the question of authenticity in a world of illusion. In the “younger” characters we see hope, aspiration and naivety. The “older” versions of these characters, through the realizations of their own follies, question the choices they’ve made and the lives they are now living. Nostalgic, glamorous, joyous, devastating, theatrical-to-the-full and yet brutally honest, Follies features many of Sondheim’s most iconic and Broadway-inherent numbers such as “I’m Still Here,” “Losing My Mind,” “The Right Girl,” “Too Many Mornings” and the ultimate showbiz anthem, “Broadway Baby!”
In selecting Follies for this Season’s Concert and Cabaret Series, Coronado Playhouse is able to bring this extravagant and opulent score to San Diego audiences. Seldom performed as a fully-fleshed production (it’s simply too big and too expensive for most theatres to consider), the music from Follies deserves to be heard live. CPH’s production is a “concert” version of the show with the spotlight firmly on the iconic, extraordinary music and the brilliant lyrics.
Playhouse board and staff member Vanessa Dinning directs this concert production alongside Musical Director, William B.J. Robinson. Ms. Dinning returns to the Playhouse, having previously directed The Importance of Being Earnest in 2010, and performing in several cabaret performances, most notably her one-woman show, By Special Arrangement in 2015. She boasts an impressive resume of creative work as an actor, director and qualified dialect coach here in San Diego, and in her native UK, having worked for distinguished theatres such as The Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and Shakespeare’s Globe in London, as well as in San Diego at Cygnet Theatre, North Coast Rep. Theatre, San Diego Musical Theatre, The Welk Resort, Moonlight Stage Productions and also on Coronado, Lamb’s Players Theatre.
Mr. Robinson has acted in several Playhouse productions, most recently playing Ernie Lally in A Man of No Importance this Season. He stays busy working all over San Diego County as an actor and Musical Director and earlier this year combined both skills in San Diego Rep’s production, Beachtown. In addition to maintaining a private voice studio, Mr. Robinson is a familiar face to San Diegans as the host of KPBS Arts on KPBS-TV.
The cast features a wide-variety of many of San Diego’s favorite performers from the worlds of community and professional theatre, choral, opera and cabaret. Playhouse regulars include Debbie David as Sally, Susan Bray as Hattie, Steven Jensen as Theodore and Ray Lynch as Weismann. Playhouse newcomers are operatic baritones Michael Sokol and Walter duMelle, as Buddy and Ben, Kim Hendrix as Phyllis and Ryan Deitrich as Roscoe. Among the featured performers are Victoria Mature (classical singer and actor) as Stella, Jaga Glassman (film and TV actor and award-winning jazz recording artist) as Emily, and Stephanie Sabin (classical singer and voice teacher) and teenager Mary Rose Vadeboncoeur (a finalist in this year’s San Diego Broadway Awards) who will duet as the “older” and “younger” selves of Heidi.
Tickets are from $20 General Admission and are available through Coronado Playhouse’s Box Office at (619) 435-4856 or online at www.CoronadoPlayhouse.com.
