ALBANY — Playhouse Stage Company's main production in Washington Park next summer will be a comedy set in Elizabethan England but with 1980s American pop tunes by the all-woman band The Go-Go's.
The jukebox musical, called "Head Over Heels," will feature a first for Playhouse Stage — a transgender actor in a role written for a transgender performer. The part, Pythio, an oracle in the 16th-century kingdom of Arcadia, was created for the 2018 Broadway production of "Head Over Heels" by the performer Peppermint, who a year earlier was a runner-up on the ninth season of "RuPaul's Drag Race"on television. Peppermint was the first openly trans person to create a principal role on Broadway.
"Head Over Heels" will run June 30 to July 23 at the Washington Park Lakehouse amphitheater.
Playhouse Stage's other production for its Park Playhouse 2022 summer will continue the 1980s theme with Playhouse Stage's teen performers in the musical adaptation of "The Wedding Singer," based on the 1998 movie starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. It is scheduled for Aug.4 to 20.
The company's 34th season is being announced Wednesday by Owen Smith, its producing artistic director.
While past Park Playhouse productions have included LGBT themes and characters in drag, including in "The Producers," the company has never chosen a production with a trans principal character written for a trans performer, Smith said.
Referring to "Head Over Heels," Smith said, "It's extraordinarily vibrant ... (and) really fun. It's been a while since did a really raucous comedy on that stage. I think that's what people will be looking for next summer." He added, "But I also think there's a lot of ignorance and bigotry out there, and that's what makes me want to do a show like this."
In addition to the two Park Playhouse shows, Playhouse Stage will mount two professional productions and three featuring students at its off-season home at Cohoes Music Hall, which Playhouse Stage also manages.
Those shows will start with "A Year With Frog and Toad," running Dec. 15 to 19, based on the beloved books by Arnold Lobel, who was raised in Schenectady. During the run, the production will be filmed for streaming to Capital Region schools during January. Next will be a professional production of Steve Martin and Edie Brickells’ bluegrass musical "Bright Star," inspired by and including songs from their Grammy Award-winning album “Love Has Come for You.” The show tells a love story spanning 1920 to 1940 in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. The production will run Jan. 27 through Feb. 13.
Three youth and teen productions will finish the 2021-22 season at the music hall: The Rodgers & Hammerstein classic "Oklahoma!" (March 3 to 13); "Honk!" (April 21 to May 1), a musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Ugly Duckling”; and a new musical titled "Pete (her) Pan" (Aug. 23 to 27), a story told through the eyes of a girl named Jane, who is the daughter of the Wendy Darling character familiar from "Peter Pan" stories, musicals and movies.
"Pete (her) Pan" has lyrics by the emerging Black playwright and composer Douglas Lyons, whose "Chicken & Biscuits" begins previews on Broadway this week. Lyons, who co-composed the score for "Pete (her) Pan" and has regularly offered master classes for Playhouse Stage students in recent years, co-created, with Melvin Tunstall III, "Polkadots: The Cool Kids Musical," which Playhouse Stage brought to Capital Region schools in 2018 and 2020. Tunstall wrote the book for "Pete (her) Pan."
Also next season, Playhouse Stage will host the Creative License Theatre Collective, formerly based in Albany, for its productions on the Cohoes Music Hall stage. Creative License's "Significant Other" will run Nov. 12 to 21, 2021, with "God of Carnage" from May 6 to 15.
Tickets for all Playhouse Stage Company and Creative License productions go on sale Friday, Sept. 24, online via playhousestage.org and thecohoesmusichall.org; by phone at 518-434-0776; or in-person at the Cohoes Music Hall Box Office at 58 Remsen St., Cohoes. Prices vary by production.
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