This year’s musical at Owego-Apalachin is Wonderful Town. The performance will be performed Feb. 19, 20, and 21 at the OA Theater in the OA Middle School.
With music by Leonard Bernstein (who also composed the more well-known West Side Story) Wonderful Town ran for 559 Broadway performances from Feb. 25, 1953 to July 3, 1954.
It won five Tony awards, including Best Musical. Since then, there has been a London revival in 1985 starring Maureen Lipman and a Broadway revival in 2003, which ran for 497 performances. Directed and choreographed by Tony award winning Kathleen Marshall, the 2003 production starred Donna Murphy in the lead role, Brooke Shields later playing Ruth.
Wonderful Town has its roots in a collection of autobiographical short stories by Ruth McKenney published in The New Yorker in the mid-1930s. The stories follow two sisters from Ohio who wanted to find their careers and themselves in a basement apartment in Greenwich Village, New York City.
Ruth and Eileen, played by Savannah Terry and Kellie Wright, respectively, are opposites in many ways. Ruth is an aspiring journalist and Eileen wants to be an actress. Gary King stars as the slightly bitter editor Bob Baker of the Manhatter, a newspaper where Ruth submits her stories.
Ruth and Eileen meet many other characters in their journey to the big city including a washed-up football player, Wreck (Camden Dyer-DeCator) and his strong-willed girlfriend Helen (Kristy Jackson). Their landlord Mrs. Appopoulos (Jessica Shuey), nightclub owner Speedy Valenti (Max Brennan), the slimy Chick Clark (Alec Winters) and drugstore owner Frank Lippencott (Andrew Clark) round out the characters that shape Ruth and Eileen’s journey away from home in Ohio.
Under the direction of Megan Burrell and Mike Meaney with choreography by Katherine Gould, the cast of 49 students has worked since mid-November preparing the music, staging, and choreography. The beautifully orchestrated score will be played by a student/adult orchestra. Sets were designed and constructed by Nate Brown, Jolene Williams and Christine Crossgrove along with over 30 other parents, students and volunteers.
