Adirondack Theatre Festival Announces Starry Cast for 30th Anniversary Season
Pictured left to right: Ashley Perez Flanagan, Jessica Frances Dukes, Parris Lewis, & Nicholas Baroudi
Adirondack Theatre Festival (ATF) announced casting for its 30th Anniversary season. Multiple Broadway and television veterans will join local talent for a starry showcase of new work.
The season kicks off with the world premiere musical comedy Todd vs the Titanic by the creators of the Off-Broadway hit Murder for Two, which ATF originated in 2010. Joe Kinosian, who composed the music of Murder for Two and played all twelve suspects in the world premiere production, will star in Todd vs the Titanic.
The madcap musical follows an apocalyptic event outside a theater in Schenectady, which wipes out every member of the cast of a musical about the Titanic… Every member, that is, except for Todd, who has the show’s smallest part. Alone and terrified, Todd soldiers on and plays all of the roles himself in the hope that someone out there is listening. Todd vs the Titanic is a hilarious one-man tour de force and a moving tribute to the power of art to sustain us. ATF’s production will transfer to the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca following the run in Glens Falls from June 27 – July 3.
Next, audiences can catch a sneak peek of a new play commissioned by ATF and created and performed by Jessica Frances Dukes (Netflix’s Ozark and Broadway’s Trouble in Mind). Dukes, an Obie Award winner and Screen Actors Guild Award nominee, makes her playwriting debut with Worth: An Intimate Exhibition, an autobiographical investigation of the value of art and artist. ATF will present a developmental reading at the Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Council (LARAC) Lapham Gallery from July 12 – 14 in partnership with the Lake George Theater Lab.
More Broadway stars arrive at ATF for The King’s Wife, a concert presentation of the new pop musical with a score by Grammy-nominated Nashville songwriter Jamie Floyd.
The King’s Wife imagines the secret history of the first wives of Henry VIII. Parris Lewis (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical – first national tour) plays Catherine of Aragon and Matthew Griffin (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical – Broadway) plays Henry VIII. They are joined by Ashley Perez Flanagan (Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 – Broadway), Jimmy Rae Bennett (the voice of Floyd in Grand Theft Auto V), Namisa Mdlalose Bizana, Austin Ku, Morgan Reilly, Briar Magee, and Richard Putorti Jr.
The season closes with Jeffrey Hatcher’s edgy new adaptation of Dial “M” for Murder. This stylish twist on the thriller made famous by the Alfred Hitchcock film features Nicholas Baroudi (Law and Order: Organized Crime and Fosse/Verdon) alongside Yesenia Iglesias, Dennis Schebetta, and Sigrid Sutter. Dial “M” for Murder runs August 1 – 7.
Single tickets for Todd vs the Titanic, The King’s Wife, and Dial “M” for Murder at the Charles R. Wood Theater range from $25 to $49. Tickets for the reading of Worth: an Intimate Exhibition at LARAC are $15. Tickets may be purchased by visiting www.atfestival.org, or by calling the Wood Theater Box Office at 518-480-4878, or in-person at the Box Office at 207 Glen Street. The Box Office is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m.
About Adirondack Theatre Festival
Martha Banta and David Turner, along with a 12-member founding committee, created the Adirondack Theatre Festival in 1993 and presented its first 18-day season of new and contemporary theater at the French Mountain Playhouse within the Lake George RV Park in 1995. Today ATF is the only professional theater festival in New York’s Capital region dedicated to new musicals and plays. Each summer ATF produces a nine-week season at the Wood Theater in Glens Falls. The organization operates under a Small Professional Theatre Agreement with Actors’ Equity Association. The actors seen on the ATF stage, as well as the designers and directors, have worked regularly on and off-Broadway, on television and in movies.