Theater season to honor Willson


Conanicut Island is being transformed into a Midwestern whistlestop to celebrate 30 years of live theater.

The Jamestown Community Theatre has announced its 2019-20 season, “Midwestern Musical by Meredith Willson,” with plans to introduce a summer show to harmonize its traditional spring and fall productions.

“We are very excited about the theatre’s continued trajectory of momentum and growth,” said Ricky Martin, artistic director.

The theater in November will stage a rendition of “The Music Man,” the 1957 Broadway musical that features Harold Hill as a deceitful bandleader. Posing as a musician, the con man hoodwinks simple townsfolk into buying instruments and uniforms. Hill, however, has no intention of training musicians; instead, he plans to skip town with the money.

“The Music Man” will be the theater’s family production for the season. Everyone who auditions on Sept. 8 will be cast.

For the production in March, the theater will present “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” The 1960 musical is a fictionalized account of the title character surviving the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Brown was sailing aboard the doomed ship to reunite with her husband, a wealthy miner from Colorado.

The primary cast of “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” will feature adults and teens. There will be no children’s ensemble.

Iris Bohensky will direct these productions with assistance from Liam Malloy and Amanda Rocheleau. Their work will pay homage to Willson, an American composer, conductor, flautist and playwright whose most prolific play, “The Music Man,” won five Tony Awards and a Grammy. Willson also was nominated twice for Academy Awards for his scores in Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” and William Wyler’s “The Little Foxes.”