Chita Rivera

In less than a month, the super-fabulous Chita Rivera will be in Buffalo performing at UB’s Center for the Arts. Chita will perform her one-woman show Chita Rivera: My Broadway, on Tuesday May 4 at 8pm at the Mainstage Theatre. Accompanied by an 11-piece orchestra, Chita will perform selections from her most celebrated musicals, including numbers from West Side Story, Bye Bye, Birdie, Sweet Charity, The Rink, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and Chicago. Buffalo is the final stop of the show, which has been touring since January. For tickets call 1-800-745-3000. For groups of 15 or more, call 645-2787.

Up next for O’Connell & Company, the William Finn musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Directed by Mary Kate O’Connell and choreographed by Matthew Clark, the show will star David Bondrow, Susana Breese, Erin L. Brignone, Joey Bucheker, Jennifer Caruana, Christopher Stephen Parada, Victoria Perez, Roger Van Dette, and Todd Warfield. The production will run April 22-May 9 at ECC North.

Bonnie Jean Taylor, Patrick Cameron, Justin Fiordaliso, and Cassie Gorniewicz star in the comedy Indoor/Outdoor by Kenny Finkle. Presented by the Buffalo Laboratory Theatre and directed by Kathleen Golde, the production will run April 9-17 at the William E. Swan Auditorium in Hilbert College. For information, call 949-4082.

Theatre for Change in collaboration with Red Thread Theatre will present a reading of Guacamole Conversations: Mother-Daughter Reflections by Helen Woods and Susan Woods. Directed by Darleen Pickering Hummert, starring Jeanne Cairns and Christina Rausa, the reading will take place on May 4 at 7pm at MusicalFare Theatre.

The GeVa Theater in Rochester will present Tom Dudzick’s Over the Tavern as part of its 2010-11 season. The season will open with Amadeus and will also include August Wilson’s Radio Golf, The Music Man, and Carry It On, a one-person musical memoir starring Maureen McGovern. The theater is currently presenting (through April 25) Wilson’s Two Trains Running, directed by Buffalo’s Ron OJ Parson.

Niagara University Theatre will open the newly renovated William P. and Marie Leary Theatre within the new Elizabeth Ann Clune Center for Theatre with the classic musical Anything Goes. The production, directed by Brother Augustine Towey, will run April 29-May 9.

Steve Solomon’s one-man play My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish, and I’m in Therapy will play Shea’s Smith Theatre May 11-23.

Robert Culp

The New Alt Performance Group’s production of Evil Dead: The Musical which just finished its very successful run, will return in October.

Jeff Denman will join Michele Ragusa for The Music Man in Concert, which the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra will present on May 29 under the stage direction of Randy Kramer. Denman just finished a very successful run of the new musical Yank! at the York Theatre Company in New York. The show might transfer to Broadway in the fall. Ragusa is also scheduled to appear with the BPO next year in Evita in Concert.

TV and movie star Robert Culp died on March 24 at the age of 79. Best known for the series I Spy and many TV shows going back to 1957, Culp made his Broadway debut in 1956 in Diary of a Scoundrel. The production also featured Peter Falk, Roddy McDowall, Jerry Stiller, and Margaret Hamilton.