Increased variety, Increased numbers

The 2008-2009 theater season has barely begun, and already it is one of the most exciting in memory. The first productions to open all have points to recommend them and should excite uncommon interest in the season ahead.

Joe Wiens plays Buddy Holly at Musicalfare

Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, up at MusicalFare, is delightful, with a surprisingly strong performance by Joe Wiens in the title role. The music is terrific, and the cast is uniformly strong, drawing on some of MusicalFare’s best talent. Lisa Ludwig has directly a likeably lean production that moves more efficiently than the overblown Toronto version I saw years ago, and plays nicely in the intimate MusicalFare space.

The Kavinoky Theatre has opened with a faithful rendering of Theresa Rebeck’s beautifully structured play, Mauritius. This is the first of a string of recent New York scripts at the Kavinoky this season, and they have favored Mauritius with a fine cast who traverse Rebeck’s numerous reversals with skill. The production, at opening, was a bit mechanical and literal, but still plenty engaging, as one delicious surprise follows another when two estranged sisters vie for the spectacularly valuable stamp collection that is their inheritance.

At Road Less Traveled Productions, Annette Daniels Taylor’s melodrama, A Little Bit of Paradise, plays briskly and offers a marvelous leading role for Sarielys Matos, and substantial supporting roles for Joyce Carolyn Butler, Dee Lamonte Perry, Aiteena Fareed, and Don Gervasi. The production, developed in RLTP’s playwriting workshop, for the most part, fulfills the promise of last year’s reading. Set in Buffalo’s East Side in 1924, an African-American attorney married to a fair-skinned Creole wife accustomed to the high life of Paris, find themselves in a dangerous fix when a member of the KKK initially mistakes the Mrs. for white. Be prepared for all the unlikely coincidences and terrifying reversals that melodrama requires. It gets intense.

The Irish Classical Theatre Company has returned to Noel Coward, who always does well for them, with Christopher Luscombe’s adaptation of Star Quality. Stylishly directed by Vincent O’Neill, the play features ICTC’s resident star, Josephine Hogan, as incandescent Lorraine Barrie. In this role, Hogan arguably stretches beyond her comfort zone, but decidedly into the hearts of her audience. Chris Critelli is perfect as a guileless first time playwright, trapped between the tyrannical director, brilliantly played by Chris Corporandy, and Hogan’s appealing primadonna.

Alleyway Theatre is giving David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole a fine go, with a production directed by Todd Warfield. Joyce Stilson plays a mother, inconsolable with grief over the accidental death of her four-year-old son. Her performance is understated and affecting, creating a woman who, to her detriment, is solid as a rock. Katie White is marvelous as her imperfect sister. To her credit, White does not steal the evening, though she could; instead, she provides the levity needed to keep the evening from being merely maudlin. Pamela Rose Mangus gains power as the evening proceeds in the role of the grandmother who has experienced loss before. David Hayes and Jake Bradley are quite good as the husband, and as the teenaged boy who unluckily hit the child with his car while swerving avoid his dog. Rabbit Hole can only be as strong as the acting ensemble, and Alleyway has served the material well.

Shows I haven’t gotten to yet include Alt Theatre’s harrowing LIT401: A School Shooting in One Act; Kaleidoscope’s detective thriller Something to Hide; Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Lancaster Opera House; Girls Night: The Musical at Shea’s Smith Theatre; and Loraine O’Donnell’s turn as Dusty Springfield in the new revue, Dusty Springfield…With You at the New Phoenix Theatre on the Park. Ujima’s return to the appealing musical retelling of the Adam and Eve story, In De Beginnin’ opens this weekend.

Special offerings for Curtain Up! weekend only include O’Connell & Company’s Diva by Diva: A Celebration of Women! at the Allendale Theatre; and An Evening with Stephen McKinley Henderson at Studio Arena Theatre.

It bears mentioning that many of Buffalo’s theater companies report a substantial increase in season ticket sales this season. MusicalFare has topped 2,000 subscribers for the first time. The Irish Classical Theatre Company is up 25 percent; their subscription base is now well above a thousand. Road Less Traveled, too, has seen a substantial increase. Shea’s Buffalo has already topped 10,000 subscribers for the coming season, including 3,000 brand new subscribers, and the campaign at these theaters is not even over.

It is tempting to say that this development is due to the closing of Studio Arena, and there is no question that a number of theaters made a play for former Studio Arena subscribers when they honored their unused tickets at the end of last season. MusicalFare in particular tried to communicate the theme, “now that you’re here, please stay,” with signage, curtain announcements, and such. Irish Classical Theatre had a more subdued sign on an easel in the lobby, and so on.

Al Nocciolino, who produces at Shea’s, observes that the phenomenon cannot be as simple as onslaught of former Studio Arena subscribers, however.

“I don’t know what is happening at other individual theaters,” said Nocciolino. “But Rochester is also seeing an uptick in subscription and GeVa Theatre has not closed. In fact, we are seeing subscription increases for touring productions all across the country. I think, frankly, that many people have decided to stay closer to home, what with gas prices and so forth. I think that’s a big part of it.

“At Shea’s it helped that our final show was Wicked, and it didn’t play six weeks, it only played four, and only three in Rochester. That meant you couldn’t always get a ticket and that helped fuel subscription. We took the idea ‘Six great shows; one great deal!’ and ran with it.”

Whatever the reason, Buffalo’s theaters are benefitting from an influx of new patrons. They seem to be rising to the occasion with diverse and appealing programming.