Little Firehouse Theatre
298 Kinderkamack Road
Oradell, NJ 07649

  PRESS RELEASE

BERGEN COUNTY PLAYERS ANNOUNCES ITS 2009-10 SEASON
It’s Curtains Up for Curtains!!
BCP to open its 77th Season with the Tony Award-Nominated Musical Curtains

Oradell, NJ, July 17, 2009

Long considered one of America’s foremost community theater groups, Bergen County Players (BCP) is proud to announce its 2009-2010 season, an ambitious, passionate and playful year of audience pleasing musicals, innovative plays and special events for its 77th consecutive season. From toe-tapping musicals to hilarious comedies to intense dramas and mysteries, BCP has garnered a reputation for outstanding quality productions at affordable prices.  The new season kicks off with Curtains, a fantastically entertaining musical comedy nominated for eight Tony Awards.  BCP is thrilled to be honored as the first community theatre venue to present Curtains.

Tickets for Curtains and the rest of the 2009-10 season are available online at www.bcplayers.org or by phone at 201-261-4200.  The box office, located at the Little Firehouse Theatre, 298 Kinderkamack Road in Oradell, NJ, will open in August 20th for walk up reservations.  Discounts are available for groups (201-262-0515) and students throughout the season. The Little Firehouse Theatre now has seating to better accommodate wheelchairs which can be purchased through the box office.

With something for everyone, BCP is bringing the best of Broadway to their neighborhood by offering the works of critically acclaimed playwrights Rupert Holmes, George S. Kaufman, Neil Simon, Tennessee Williams, Anthony Shaffer, and Alan Ayckbourn.  With a ticket price that’s about the same as for a movie, popcorn, and a soda, BCP continues to be committed to the belief that everyone should have the opportunity to experience the artistry and excitement of live theater.

ON THE MAINSTAGE

CURTAINS - September 12 - October 10, 2009
Book by Rupert Holmes, Lyrics by Fred Ebb, Music by John Kander, Directed by Steve Bell
Tickets are $21 (all performances)
It’s curtains up for Curtains, a fantastically entertaining musical comedy nominated for eight Tony Awards in 2007. Featuring one of the last scores by the legendary song writing team of Kander & Ebb, Curtains is set in 1959 and unfolds backstage at Boston’s Colonial Theatre. When the star dies on opening night, Lt. Frank Cioffi arrives to conduct an investigation. But the lure of the theater proves irresistible and after an unexpected romance blooms for the stagestruck detective, he finds himself just as drawn toward making the show a hit as he is in solving the murder. Playwright Rupert Holmes (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, “Pina Colada Song”) has personally worked with BCP on this production to rewrite it so that it fits on a community theater stage. We are grateful for his hands-on participation!

THE SOLID GOLD CADILLAC - October 24 – November 14, 2009
Written by George S. Kaufman and Howard Teichmann, Directed by Peter Colletto
Tickets are $19 Friday and Saturday/ $16 Sunday
America in the 1950s. General Products is a giant manufacturing conglomerate, and members of its Board of Directors earn enormous salaries in return for very little work. Then mild-mannered Laura Partridge shows up at a stockholders meeting and starts asking questions. Lots of questions. Resonating with today’s headlines, it will have you laughing and cheering in your seats as good triumphs over greed. George S. Kaufman (You Can’t Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner) has written “...another big hit, with riotously funny roles” (New York Mirror). “Hey, somebody’s gotta keep an eye on those geniuses...” Sound familiar?

RAPUNZARELLA WHITE - November 28 – December 20, 2009
A new musical by June Rachelson-Ospa and Daniel Neiden, Directed by Frank Avellino
Tickets are $13 (all performances)
Presenting a brand new musical tale spun from the familiar threads of Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Snow White in which they are actually triplets cast off into their own separate stories by one very angry witch. Herschel, the adorable Fairy Tailor, weaves together their sad plights, but our favorite fairy tale Princesses reunite as sisters when each finds her true Prince Charming...and true love. “Happily Ever After” may never have seemed so far off, but fear not...as in all fairy tales, happiness and love prevail and the wicked see the error of their ways!

PLAZA SUITE- January 9 – 30, 2010
Written by Neil Simon, Directed by Jerry Pettinati
Tickets are $19 Friday and Saturday/ $16 Sunday
A long-married couple celebrates an anniversary with a return trip to their honeymoon suite. A Hollywood producer, famous for both his films and his womanizing, arranges a rendezvous with his old high school flame, now a starstruck New Jersey housewife. And a manic couple hosting an expensive wedding reception for their daughter faces one basic problem--the bride refuses to come out of the bathroom. These three fall-down-funny scenes have two things in common... they’re all set in New York’s spectacular Plaza Hotel, and they’re all written by the Bard of Broadway, Neil Simon (The Odd Couple, Brighton Beach Memoirs). Nominated for three Tony Awards in 1968 (winning for Mike Nichols as Best Director) and then turned into a highly successful film starring Walter Matthau, Plaza Suite ran for over 1,000 performances and is still one of Simon’s most enduring (and endearing) plays.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF - February 13 – March 6, 2010
Written by Tennessee Williams, Directed by Jacqueline McElroy Poquette
Tickets are $19 Friday and Saturday/ $16 Sunday
Big Daddy. Big Mama. Brick. And of course, Maggie “the Cat”. Iconic characters in a timeless drama where repressed desires beset a wealthy Southern family whose lives are stripped of pretense in a shattering moment of revelation. This classic by Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie) won both the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award in 1955. And now, more than 50 years later, it still packs the same emotional punch that transcends time and region, as Williams uses his craft to entertain, enlighten and bare men’s souls.

WHODUNNIT - March 20 – April 17, 2010
Written by Anthony Shaffer, Directed by Bunny Mateosian
Tickets are $19 Friday and Saturday/ $16 Sunday
It was a dark and stormy night...six diverse strangers (and a very odd butler) have gathered in a gloomy, old English manor for a formal dinner party. Blackmail is on the menu, and you can depend on murder for the main course!  Playwright Anthony Shaffer is no stranger to the comic mystery-thriller genre, as proven by his 1971 Tony Award-winning Sleuth. In this amusingly clever play, reality and illusion run rings around truth and fiction in which no one is who he or she seems to be. Makeup, wigs, and phony accents are employed with quick-change artistry as the mystery of who did what to whom spirals deeper and deeper. The plot has more twists than a corkscrew, and you’ll be at the edge of your seat throughout as you try to figure out...Whodunnit.

COMIC POTENTIAL- May 1 – 23, 2010
Written by Alan Ayckbourn, Directed by Ray Yucis
Tickets are $19 Friday and Saturday/ $16 Sunday
In the not-too-distant future, when actors and robotic “actoids” are really indistinguishable, an aspiring screenwriter gets more than he bargained for when he finds himself smitten with his almost human leading lady. Equal parts riotous farce, romantic comedy, and stinging satire, Comic Potential has something to tickle everyone’s funnybone. Complete with double-takes, pies in the face, clever wordplay, chase scenes, and the requisite happy ending, this is a play that will leave you laughing—and thinking—long after you leave the theater. Sir Alan Ayckbourn (The Norman Conquests, Absurd Person Singular) is often called “the Neil Simon of London’s West End”, and more than a dozen of his finely tuned comedies have ended up on Broadway. His plays have been translated into 35 languages while winning seven London Evening Standard Awards

ON THE SECOND STAGE

By The Sea, By The Sea, By The Beautiful Sea - November 7 – 8, 2009
Dawn by Joe Pintauro, Day by Lanford Wilson, Dusk by Terrence McNally, Directed by Frank Osmers
Tickets are $10 (Only 2 performances)
Much like another of our productions this season, a single New York location (a stretch of beach on Long Island) is the locale for three short one-act plays, this time taking place over the course of a single day. Dawn is by Joe Pintauro (a Long Island native), followed by Day by Lanford Wilson (The Hot L Baltimore, Talley’s Folly) and then Dusk by Terrence McNally (Master Class, The Full Monty).

Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You - May 15 - 16, 2010
Written by Christopher Durang, Directed by Carol Fisher
Tickets are $10 (Only 2 performances)
Sister Mary, a nun who is parochial in every sense of the word, educates, indoctrinates, and inculcates in this hilariously dark comedy that could only come from the pen of the bitingly funny Christopher Durang (Beyond Therapy, The Marriage of Bette and Boo). Even when confronted with the lasting psychological trauma she has inflicted upon her former students, Sister Mary is unable to bend her fervent beliefs in the religious dogma upon which she has built her entire existence in this bold theatrical piece that was nearly banned in several cities.  Contains mature language/content.

TICKET AND SCHEDULE INFORMATION

• All performances take place at The Little Firehouse Theatre at 298 Kinderkamack Road in Oradell, home to the Bergen County Players since 1949. All tickets for the musical, Curtains, are $21.00. All tickets for the December holiday show are $13.00. All other tickets are $19.00 on Friday and Saturdays and $16.00 on Sundays. Second Stage tickets are $10.00.
• As it has for the past few seasons, the Players will continue to offer a Q & A (“Questions & Artists”) discussion following select performances.  These popular “talk-backs” will take place on the first Friday evening of each Mainstage show.  Admission is included in the cost of the ticket.
• Those interested in schedules, discount offers and making reservations for the 2009-10 season, can log onto BCP’s website at: www.bcplayers.org, visit the box office at 298 Kinderkamack Road in Oradell or call (201) 261-4200.  Visa, Master Card, and American Express accepted.
• Those interested in Group Sales or benefit theater parties can call (201) 262-0515.
• Student Rush tickets available for $5 for students age 25 and under with valid ID, 30 minutes prior to curtain. One ticket per ID. Cash only. Students can also guarantee their seats in advance either online or through the box office for the special student price of just $14.00. Student Rush tickets are not available for the December holiday show.
• Parking is free for our patrons at the Park Avenue municipal lot, across the street, one-half block north of the theater.

The Bergen County Players, Inc., is a non-Equity, non-profit community theatre company dedicated to presenting quality productions for the enrichment of the community.