Closer Than Ever
A Very Special Production to Benefit STS's "Raise The Roof Fund"
August 14 at 2:30 p.m., August 17, 18, 19, 20 at 8 p.m. and August 21 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tickets are $15/$13 students, members, and seniors. Call 845-688-2279 for reservations.
STS Playhouse is proud to present Closer Than Ever, directed by Ricarda O'Conner, a musical revue featuring special Equity Guest Artists Janna Cardia, Alex Agard, and Austin Ku, and local singers Amy Wallace and Chuck Sokolowski, as well as guest musical director Eric Thomas Johnson. Closer Than Ever is the work of the team of Richard Maltby, Jr., and David Shire. In a collaboration that has thrived for over forty years, they have created a body of work that is a powerful and witty reflection of the times we live in and offers the audience an emotional journey through the anguish, amazement and human comedy of contemporary living. The singers who make up the cast combine their voices and sing solo to absolute perfection. Viewers will be treated to something truly new and extraordinary from this small theatre in the mountains. All proceeds from the performance will go towards STS's "Raise the Roof Fund" to replace the roof of our historic Playhouse.
Closer Than Ever will open on August 14th as part of The Phoenicia Festival of The Voice. This very special production is funded in part by a grant from Ulster County.
In 1977, Maltby and Shire established themselves as one of the theater's leading songwriting teams with Starting Here, Starting Now. That revue was about youth, first love and the promise that life holds for everyone. With Closer Than Ever, their view of the world is older and wiser. Choices aren't so simple. Emotions are full of ambiguities and contradictions. People who have experienced a bit of life find themselves thinking and feeling things they never could have predicted. In songs that deal with such diverse topics as aging, working couples, second marriages, midlife crisis and unrequited love, Maltby and Shire take us on an emotional journey through the anguish, amazement and human comedy of contemporary living.
As Stephen Holden said in the New York Times: "The Songs of Maltby and Shire communicate something rarely found in theatre music nowadays: a rich sweeping sense of lives being lived and people changing over time."
This project is made possible in part through support from the County of Ulster's Ulster County Cultural Services & Promotion Fund administrated by Dutchess County Arts Council.
