Returning classics such as Angels in America and the regional premieres of more recent hits, including It Shoulda Been You and The Tribute Artist, will feature in Uptown Players’ 2017 season. The six-show season, including the company’s annual fundraising concert, is a mix of splashy musicals, one seminal drama, and an epic production of a concert version of Titanic with the Turtle Creek Chorale.
Here’s how the season schedule, announced Friday, plays out:
Angels In America, Part One: Millennium Approaches: November 4 – November 20, 2016
Broadway Our Way: March 2 – March 5, 2017
It Shoulda Been You: March 24 – April 9, 2017
Titanic: Concert Version: May 5 – May 7, 2017
La Cage Aux Folles: July 14 – July 30, 2017
The Tribute Artist: August 25 – September 10, 2017
Individual tickets and season passes are available now online. All performances are at Kalita Humphreys Theater except for Titanic, a collaboration with the Turtle Creek Chorale at City Performance Hall. Go here for more information and tickets.
The press release from Uptown Players is copied below:
“DALLAS, July 11, 2016 – Uptown Players, a professional theater group located in the Uptown area of Dallas, has announced its 2017 season at the Kalita Humphreys Theater and Dallas City Performance Hall, which will feature the regional premieres of the six-time 2015 Outer Critics Circle Award nominated musical, It Shoulda Been You and the hilarious 2014 Off-Broadway hit comedy The Tribute Artist. Also in the season lineup are the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning drama, Angels In America, Part One: Millennium Approaches, aepicnd the Tony Award-winning musical La Cage Aux Folles. Uptown Players will also present a concert version of the multi-Tony Award winning musical, Titanic, in conjunction with the Turtle Creek Chorale in May at the Dallas City Performance Hall, and its annual fundraising production, Broadway Our Way, returns in March.
2017 SEASON OVERVIEW
Angels In America, Part One: Millennium Approaches: November 4 – November 20, 2016
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, Tony Kushner’s epic play, set in 1985 in New York City, opens with Louis Ironson, a gay Jew, learning that his lover, Prior Walter has contracted the AIDS virus. As the play and Prior’s illness progress, Louis becomes unable to cope with the emotional stress and moves out. Meanwhile, closeted gay Mormon and Republican Joe Pitt, a law clerk in the same judge’s office where Louis holds a clerical job, is offered a major job opportunity by his mentor, the McCarthyist lawyer Roy Cohn. Joe doesn’t immediately take the job because he feels he has to check with his Valium-addicted, agoraphobic wife, Harper, who is unwilling to move. Angels In America, Part One: Millennium Approaches will be performed at the Kalita Humphreys Theater from November 4 – 20, 2016.
Broadway Our Way: March 2 – March 5, 2017
Uptown Players’ annual fundraiser, Broadway Our Way, light-heartedly pits the men against the women to determine who the true Divas of the Dallas stage really are. The evening features many of your favorite actors from past Uptown Players seasons performing selections from your favorite Broadway shows both past and present, done with an Uptown Players twist! It is sure to be a hot ticket with only four performances in March of 2017 at the Kalita Humphreys Theater.
It Shoulda Been You: March 24 – April 9, 2017
Uptown Players continues its season with the regional premiere of the charming, and funny new musical It Shoulda Been You. You are invited to a wedding day you’ll never forget, where anything that can go wrong does, and love pops up in mysterious places. In a world where nothing is what it seems, religions collide, Machiavellian plots are revealed, promises broken, secrets exposed, and hope springs from the most unlikely of places. The bride is Jewish. The groom is Catholic. Her mother is a force of nature; his mother is a tempest in a cocktail shaker. And when the bride’s ex-boyfriend crashes the party, the perfect wedding starts to unravel faster than you can whistle “Here Comes the Bride!” Plots are hatched, pacts are made, secrets are exposed. It Shoulda Been You runs from March 24 – April 9, 2017
Titanic: Concert Version: May 5 – May 7, 2017
Titanic, with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and a book by Peter Stone, opened on Broadway in 1997 and won five Tony Awards including the award for Best Musical. Titanic is set on the ocean liner RMS Titanic which sank on its maiden voyage on April 15, 1912. The musical examines the causes, the conditions and the characters involved in this ever-fascinating drama. This concert version, with over 100 voices, will be presented in conjunction with the Turtle Creek Chorale and will take place at the Dallas City Performance Hall in the arts district downtown from May 5 – 7, 2017.
La Cage Aux Folles: July 14 – July 30, 2017
Winner of numerous awards including the 2010 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical and 2010 Outer Critics Circle Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Musical, Uptown Players is excited to include La Cage Aux Folles in its 2017 season. After twenty years of un-wedded bliss Georges and Albin, two men partnered for better-or-worse get a bit of both when Georges’ son (fathered during a one-night fling) announces his impending marriage to the daughter of a bigoted, right-wing politician. Further complicating the situation is the ‘family business’: Albin and Georges run a drag nightclub in St. Tropez, where Albin is the “star” performer ‘Zaza’. Georges reluctantly agrees to masquerade as “normal” when he meets the family of the bride-to-be. But Albin has other plans, with hilarious results. Don’t miss this hilarious musical during its run – July 14 – 30, 2017 at the Kalita Humphreys Theater.
The Tribute Artist: August 25 – September 10, 2017
To close its 16th season, Uptown Players will present the regional premiere of Charles Busch’s, The Tribute Artist. An out-of-work female impersonator assumes the role of his elderly landlady when she dies in her sleep, in order to hang on to her valuable Greenwich Village townhouse. This “perfect” scheme goes awry and leads to a wild path of twists and reversals plotted by an eccentric rogues gallery of outrageous schemers. Busch’s signature blend of quick-witted banter and gender-bending hijinks excel in this new play from the master of Off-Broadway farce. The production runs August 25 – September 10, 2017.
Individual ticket prices for all shows range from $25 to $55. Performances at the Kalita Humphreys Theater, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd at Blackburn, will run at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings and 2 p.m. on Sundays. Performances at Dallas City Performance Hall, 2520 Flora Street are at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday. Four, five, or six show season ticket flex packages are available and include great discounts on both premium and regular seating. Individual and season tickets can be purchased online beginning Friday, July 15th at www.uptownplayers.org or by phone at 214-219-2718.”
