Enjoy the current issue of New Jersey Countryside Magazine, available now at bookstores, on newsstands and by subscription.
Entertainment & Coming Events
New Jersey Countryside Magazine provides a comprehensive listing of New Jersey’s performing arts, museum and gallery exhibits, and special events.
This oil-on-canvas work, “Lake Light," by William P. Duffy is part of the two-part exhibition, A Season of Discovery IV, featuring 19th- through early 20th-century paintings and the recent paintings of gallery artists. Runs September 25 through October 30 at J.M. Stringer Gallery.
Bickford Theatre (Morristown)
Cape May Stage
The Community Theatre at the Mayo Center for the Performing Arts (Morristown)
East Lynne Theater Company (Cape May)
Highlands Art Gallery (Chester)
J.M. Stringer Gallery of Fine Art (Bernardsville)
Montclair Art Museum
Morris Museum (Morristown)
New Jersey Ballet Company (Livingston)
Paper Mill Playhouse (Millburn)
Peak Performances @ Montclair
Pollak Theatre (West Long Branch)
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (Madison)
The State Theatre (New Brunswick)
Union County Performing Arts Center (Rahway)
Bickford Theatre
at the Morris Museum
6 Normandy Heights Road
Morristown
(973) 971-3706 or (973) 971-3700
www.bickfordtheatre.org
9/23–10/17. Mack & Mabel. Tap your troubles away with this rollicking and romantic musical from the composer of Hello, Dolly! and La Cage Aux Folles. Mack & Mabel takes you on a thrilling roller coaster ride through Jerry Herman’s greatest score in this tale of silent movie director Mack Sennett’s pie-in-the face, Keystone Kops, and Bathing Beauties Hollywood and Mack’s even wilder love affair with his leading lady Mabel Normand. Enjoy such classics as “I Won’t Send Roses” and “Time Heals Everything” in what the New York Post called “the most lovable musical in years.”
Cape May Stage
Performing at: The Robert Shackleton Playhouse (Corner of Bank & Lafayette Streets)
Offices: 31 Perry Street
Cape May
(609) 884-1341
www.capemaystage.com
8/25–9/25. Happy Days. In Happy Days, award-winning playwright Samuel Beckett pursues his relentless search for the meaning of existence, probing the tenuous relationships that bind one person to another, and each to the universe, to time past and time present. Happy Days offers only two characters: a married couple, Winnie and Willie, a mound of dirt as the set, and a bag of props containing a few earthly possessions.
9/29–10/23. TopDog/UnderDog. This 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning play is about two African American brothers, named Lincoln and Booth. Given these names as a “joke” by their father, the two men cope with women, work, poverty, gambling, racism and their troubled upbringings. Using three-card monte as a metaphor, this play is ultimately about the Great American Con, and competition, reversals and mirror images that reflect the true self.
The Community Theatre
at the Mayo Center for the Performing Arts
100 South Street
Morristown
(973) 539-8008
www.mayoarts.org
9/23. Phil Vassar — piano man extraordinaire and the hardest working man in country — performs his rhythm and blues-infused, infectiously buoyant brand of country music that has led to numerous hits such as “Just Another Day in Paradise,” ‘Carlene” and “That’s When I Love You.”
11/9. Pink Martini cuts across the genres of pop, jazz and classical to celebrate the world’s musical diversity with a hypnotic sound that transcends cultures and languages. Enjoy an evening of music that soothes, music that grooves and music that’s just pure fun.
East Lynne Theater Company
Performing at: 500 Hughes Street
Offices at: 121 Fourth Avenue
Cape May
(609) 884-5898
www.eastlynnetheater.org
9/22–10/23. Berkeley Square. An American who inherits a home in London’s Berkeley Square becomes so fascinated reading the letters and diaries of his ancestors, that he’s sent back in time to 1784, a year after the end of the American Revolution. Engaged to a woman in 1928, he meets two enchanting sisters in 1784. Is life better in the past or the present? This highly original romantic fantasy is based on The Sense of the Past, an unfinished novel by Henry James.
Highlands Art Gallery
Chester Village Square
54 Main Street, Suite 3
(behind 44 & 50 Main Street)
Chester
(908) 879-1610
www.highlandsartgallery.com
9/25–10/17. One Woman Show featuring landscape artist Eleinne Basa. Artist’s reception will be heald September 25 from 6 to 9 p.m.
10/23–11/14. The Art of Autumn featuring equine art by Beth Parcel Evans and other fall-themed paintings by the gallery’s artists. Opening reception on October 23 from 6 to 9 p.m. Evans will be in attendance.
J.M. Stringer Gallery of Fine Art
21-25 Claremont Road
Bernardsville
(908) 766-6400
www.jmstringergallery.com
9/25–10/30. A Season of Discovery IV ... A Two Part Exhibition. Part I will be in the Exhibition Gallery (21 Claremont Road) and will showcase 19th through early 20th-century paintings — American, British and Continental. Part II in the Annex Gallery (25 Claremont Road) will feature the recent paintings of gallery artists William P. Duffy, Christopher McCall and Joseph Sundwall.
Montclair Art Museum
3 South Mountain Avenue
Montclair
(973) 746-5555
www.montclairartmuseum.org
Through 9/25/2011. Engaging with Nature: American and Native American Artists (A.D. 1200-2004). This is the first exhibition ever presented by the museum to integrate, around a central theme, all time periods and American and Native American art represented in the museum’s collection. More than half of the nearly 40 works have never or rarely been displayed. The works in the exhibition encompass an astonishing variety of art and artifacts, from prehistoric Native American ceramics to historical 19th-century landscape paintings to contemporary staged photographs, suggesting various conceptions of landscape and nature.
9/24–1/2/11. Living for Art: The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection. Dorothy and Herbert Vogel assembled one of the most remarkable collections of contemporary art in America, especially drawings, amassing some 4,000 objects. With the help of the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, they launched a national gifts program, Fifty Works for Fifty States. This program distributed 2,500 works from the Vogels’ collection throughout the nation, with 50 works going to a selected institution in each of the 50 states. The Montclair Art Museum was chosen as the recipient in New Jersey.
Morris Museum
6 Normandy Heights Road
Morristown
(973) 971-3700
www.morrismuseum.org
10/3–12/5. Icons of Costume: Hollywood’s Golden Era and Beyond. Film lovers and fashionistas will delight in seeing this exhibition featuring fashions and accessories worn by luminous film stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Errol Flynn, Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, Warren Beatty, Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Kelly, Loretta Young and many others. More than 50 costumes and objects present the still-influential designs of celebrated fashion designers, from the 1940s through the 1990s, including Edith Head, Adrian, Walter Plunkett, Orry-Kelly, Bob Mackie and others of legendary renown. The exhibition highlights several films that were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume, of which five took home the Oscar. Also included are rare publicity stills, lobby cards, jewelry and film props.
New Jersey Ballet Company
15 Microlab Road
Livingston
(973) 597-9600
www.njballet.org
10/30. Halloween Show featuring Ghosts of Ballet. The New Jersey Ballet has thrilled audiences from Bergen to Cape May with top quality professional ballet and has given hundreds of thousands of adults and children their first introduction to ballet and inspired in many a lifelong love of the arts. It has also taken the best of New Jersey arts to audiences in Europe and Asia. Performance at The Lackland Performing Arts Center at Centenary College in Hackettstown.
Paper Mill Playhouse
Brookside Drive
Millburn
(973) 379-4343
www.papermill.org
9/22–10/17. Hairspray. Winner of eight Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Original Score, the show Variety described as an “infinitely spirited, bubblegum-flavored confection” launches our new season aerosol-style. You’ll tap your feet to the beat as Tracy Turnblad and friends triumph over high school bullies, racism and enemies everywhere of big girls with big hair.
Peak Performances @ Montclair
Montclair State University
1 Normal Avenue
Montclair
973-655-5112
www.peakperfs.org
10/14–17. Double Vision. Carolyn Carlson, one of America’s great artist expats, returns home for the first time since 2005 to present Double Vision, a magical use of multimedia to create a new world. The work was created in collaboration with Electronic Shadow (architect Naziha Mestaoui and media artist Yacine Aït Kaci). Former Alwin Nikolais principal, Carlson, who has lived in France since 1971, is director of the Centre Chorégraphique National Roubaix Nord-Pas de Calais and the Atelier de Paris-Carolyn Carlson.
10/21–24. Dark Matters. Crystal Pite’s Dark Matters begins with a conversation between a Bunraku puppet and its creator before careening into explorations of creation vs. destruction and free will vs. manipulation, using the mysterious qualities of dark matter as inspiration. Pite is a Canadian choreographer whose company, Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM, is now based in Frankfurt, Germany.
Pollak Theatre
Monmouth University
400 Cedar Avenue
West Long Branch
(732) 263-6889
www.monmouth.edu/arts
9/25. Tamburitzans. Adapting their name from a stringed folk instrument, the Tamburitzans are an energetic ensemble of talented folk artists dedicated to the preservation and performance of the music, songs and dances of Eastern Europe. Appearing in more than 400 original and authentically reproduced costumes, the Tamburitzans of Duquesne University present a two-hour kaleidoscope of sight and sound from countries that include Greece, Armenia, Hungary, Croatia and more. This all-new production creates a carousel of style and color from the first note to the final stomp.
10/16. Sol Y Canto. Come for a flavorful evening of Latin and Caribbean food, story and song that celebrates life! Sabor Y Memoria explores the diversity of cultures in much the same way that flavors are blended in the cuisine of a new land. Songs, reminiscent of food, combine poetic lyrics and sabor, the “tastiness” of music that will make you want to get up and dance.
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey
36 Madison Avenue
Madison
(973) 408-5600
www.shakespearenj.org
9/15–10/10. All’s Well That Ends Well. Not seen on The Shakespeare Theatre stage in more than a decade, this new vision of Shakespeare’s mercurial romance features an ensemble cast of nine actors switching identities as the play moves from Rossillion to Paris to Florence and back again. Whether the love story ends well or not well is often a matter of debate, and that ambiguity is, in part, what has made the tale so compelling.
10/20–11/14. The Lion in Winter. This wickedly biting “domestic comedy” of a dysfunctional family dynasty in the year 1183 was nominated for two Tony Awards when it opened on Broadway in 1966, and later was made into an Academy Award-winning film. Few families can boast a more ferocious power struggle than that of the Plantagenet family. Here the battlefield is a psychological one where the weapons of choice are sharp-edged words, acerbic humor and emotional grenades packed with the bitter shrapnel of the past.
The State Theatre
15 Livingston Avenue
New Brunswick
(732) 246-SHOW
www.statetheatrenj.org
10/23–25. Curious George Live! is the new can’t miss live stage musical that will delight your whole family. Curious George is the inquisitive and loveable little monkey who takes everyone along on intriguing problem-solving adventures. Laugh out loud, tap your toes, sing and dance along as you follow Curious George on his quest to win the Golden Meatball Contest. It’s a story about friends helping friends because of one very special secret ingredient.
7/18. Squeeze & Cheap Trick. With the perfect combination of Chris Difford’s lyrics and Glenn Tilbrook’s melodies, Squeeze created some of the most memorable and most loved songs of any generation of songwriters. Songs such as “Pulling Mussels (From a Shell),” “Tempted,” “Cool for Cats,” “Black Coffee in Bed” and “Up the Junction” cemented their place as one of Britain’s most important bands in New Wave music.
Two River Theater Company
21 Bridge Avenue
Red Bank
(732) 345-1400
www.trtc.org
9/21–10/10. Intimate Apparel. Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage’s vivid tale is set among the bustle of New York in the early part of the 20th Century. Esther, a talented African-American seamstress, crafts stunning undergarments for women from the brothels to the Upper East Side. Shimmering with vital and memorable characters, this is a powerful and moving tale of romance, independence and what lies just under our outer appearances.
10/26–11/14. Opus. Making great art is never easy. Making it in perfect harmony might just be impossible. When one member of an esteemed string quartet is fired days before the most important performance of their career, the others must quickly find a replacement. Personalities clash, tensions rise, and the musicians grapple with how far they will go to achieve excellence. This play is a passionate, smart, funny and moving story that resonates with the creative artist in all of us.
Union County Performing Arts Center
1601 Irving Street
Rahway
(732) 499-8226
www.ucac.org
9/25. The Berenstain Bears in Family Matters the Musical. This fun-filled musical weaves together three of Stan and Jan Berenstain’s most popular books: The Berenstain Bears Learn about Strangers, The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food and The Berenstain Bears’ Trouble at School.
10/9. Steve Solomon’s My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish and I’m still in Therapy. The comedy chaos continues in this critically acclaimed prequel to his original smash hit. Still in Therapy takes us back to Steve’s wacky childhood growing up with his twin sister “The Smoker.” The audience follows along in this wonderfully funny journey about growing up, mixed marriages, ex wives, dogs, cats, dieting and dozens of other side-splitting situations that we all relate to.