Third season at Farmers Alley Theatre really sings

Farmers Alley Theatre returns for its third season with a powerful Pulitzer Prize winner, a quirky comedy by a well-known Michigan talent, some delightful musicals — including a brand-new one — a new musical revue and an evening of cabaret entertainment.

Farmers Alley kicks off its season with A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline, which will star local singer Lana Hawkins of the Lana Hawkins Jazz Trio as the country music legend who died young in a plane crash in 1963. Following will be Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry, the tale of the unlikely friendship between an elderly white woman and her African-American chauffeur before and during the Civil Rights Movement. The play won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Peg Small will play the title role.

In time for the holidays, Farmers Alley will stage The Marvelous Wonderettes, in which four friends vie to become queen at Springfield High’s 1958 senior prom. You’ll hear hits of 1950s and 1960s during this nostalgia-filled musical revue.  

February brings Escabana in da Moonlight, an original comedy hit by Michigan’s own Jeff Daniels. The Upper Peninsula has never been funnier!  Then comes a special cabaret — but for one weekend only! —  courtesy of the song-writing team of Scott Burkell and Paul Loesel, who wrote the full-length musical Ella Minnow Pea.  

Scott Burkell returns in April in a new musical, A Catered Affair, in its Western Michigan premiere. The musical, which will also star fellow Broadway performers Joe Aiello and Barbara Marineau, is based on the 1956 movie, The Catered Affair, written by the legendary Paddy Chayefsky and Gore Vidal. The film starred Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine, and the romantic comedy deals with a small family wedding that balloons into a runaway extravaganza!  

The longest-running musical in the history of London’s West End will hit Michigan in June. The rock musical Blood Brothers relates the tale of fraternal twins, separated at birth, who meet repeatedly during their lives, ignorant that they’re siblings.

Urinetown, the raucous musical Broadway satire of politics, populism, capitalism run amok and corporate corruption, closes out the season in July and August. The musical imagines a dystopia in which a 20-year drought leads to a fee to pee in corporate-controlled communal toilets. Those guilty of violating the rule on voiding get sent to Urinetown — never to return! Can anyone save the day?

Tickets for musicals cost $23 for students and senior citizens and $25 for other adults; other plays are $3 less. Cabarets cost $29, which includes coffee and dessert. You can buy tickets online, by calling (269) 343-2727 or by visiting the box office weekdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 90 minutes before any show. Student rush tickets, priced at $15, are released five minutes before curtain; you can put your name on the waiting list starting an hour before curtain.

HelloMetro Tip: Download a map to convenient parking areas near the Farmers Alley Theatre here.

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