Come To My Garden

The Port Tobacco Players will be presenting a production of the musical The Secret Garden on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from now until May 23rd, 2010. This is a musical rendition of the children's story of the same name with beautiful music and a touching story that the entire family can enjoy. This particular production was directed by Amy Cooksey, with music direction by Therese Theidemann and choreography by Randy Tusing.

I had the pleasure of taking some photos of the performance during their tech week and was quite pleased with the amount of talent on the stage, especially from the younger actors! Anna Radtke plays a very dynamic Mary Lennox opposite Tori Carter's bratty, although somewhat endearing, Colin Craven. Tracy Weisemann superbly sings through the lyric soprano role of Lily, harmonizing wonderfully with Peter Ullman as Archibald Craven. Another stand-out performance for me was given by Mary Theideman, as the Craven's house-maid. Her rendition of "Hold On" was very warm and sentimental and even gave me goosebumps a couple of times. The ensemble for this show was also extremely solid, which was quite a task for some of the challenging vocal parts throughout the score of this show.

Here are some pictures :-)

Peter Ullman as Archibald (L) and Anna Radtke as Mary (R)

Anna Radtke as Mary (L) and Tori Carter as Colin (R)

Mike Mickey as Neville Craven (L) and Anna Radtke as Mary (R)

Mary Theideman as Martha

Tori Carter as Colin (L), Blake Racer as Dickon (C), and Anna Radtke as Mary (R)


You can see a full cast list and purchase tickets for the remaining performances by going to http://www.ptplayers.com/

In other news, I recently had the pleasure of seeing Anne Arundel Community College's production of Urinetown a couple of weekends ago, and I absolutely loved it! I am usually not a fan of overtly, for lack of a better term, "campy" shows, but this one was well done enough that I did not even notice. I went to support a friend of mine, Kasey Staniszewski, who played Hope Cladwell in the show. This was my first time seeing her in a leading role, and also the first time I had actually heard her sing, and it was definitely nice to see! Not to mention, she looked absolutely gorgeous (as per usual). Although this show is over now, it was definitely a must-see! I also would like to congratulate Magruder High School on their production of Curtains. I have never been so thoroughly impressed by a local high school theatre group, especially on a show as gargantuan as such. The ensemble was pure brilliance in the vocal department and even had amazing choreography to boot. I was pleased to find out that the show was choreographed by Kristina Friedgen who will be my director for A Chorus Line this summer! A few stand-out performers included Rachel Kelly as Carmen Bernstein, Kelly Ohanian as Niki Harris, Matt Dyer as Lt. Frank Cioffi and Emily Reggia as Bambi. Oh, and Sonia Galiber played an AMAZING clarinet solo, too! ;-) Here's to a job well done!

sb.imagery

All images owned and copyrighted by Scotty Beland.