{"id":34919,"date":"2024-08-08T16:26:35","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T20:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=34919"},"modified":"2024-08-08T16:26:37","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T20:26:37","slug":"music-man-norm-foster-fave-to-open-theatre-auroras-2024-2025-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/music-man-norm-foster-fave-to-open-theatre-auroras-2024-2025-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Music Man, Norm Foster fave to open Theatre Aurora\u2019s 2024-2025 season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After a resounding 2023-2024 season which saw attendance beat pre-pandemic levels, Theatre Aurora is gearing up for a new season of audience favourites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fresh off last year\u2019s season opener of Anne of Green Gables: The Musical, the new season will once again have toes tapping as Theatre Aurora presents Meredith Wilson\u2019s classic The Music Man, opening on November 22, and running on select dates and times through December 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kicking off the New Year is The Melville Boys by Norm Foster, one of Canada\u2019s most popular playwrights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were just thrilled with (our previous season) and we\u2019re still kind of basking in the glow,\u201d says Judy Cragg, Artistic Director for Theatre Aurora, with a laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adds Theatre Aurora President Neill Kernohan, \u201cLast year was one of the best years Theatre Aurora has had in recent memory. We surpassed all ticket sales and new people coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, says Cragg, added a bit of pressure on the Board to make sure this year lived up to the last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe took our time,\u201d says Cragg of she and the team crafting the season. \u201cWe were supposed to try and not have another musical with as large a cast as Anne of Green Gables at 26 \u2013 now we have 30 in The Music Man! Sometimes you\u2019ve just got to do what you\u2019ve got to do!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Audience and Board alike, she says, really wanted a musical and The Music Man is always a winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a lot in The Music Man \u2013 there is redemption and growth for all of these people \u2013 and it just gives so much joy. Start with the music, it\u2019s just beautiful melodically. When you think of \u201876 Trombones\u2019, I hope people will be dancing out of the theatre when they are leaving. It\u2019s just so uplifting and beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Cragg, The Music Man is all about the people \u2013 particularly the strict Iowans encountered by conman-travelling salesman Harold Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are within themselves, live their lives within very strict parameters, their children are supposed to behave in a certain way, and there\u2019s not a lot of lightness and joy. In comes Harold Hill, scammer extraordinaire. That\u2019s how he sees his life \u2013 he\u2019s a scammer, he goes from town to town, with a woman in every town, and, as he says in the end, he gets his foot stuck in the door. There is a huge redemption. For everybody, it\u2019s a huge change in how they feel, what their outlook on life is, and that\u2019s my big takeaway \u2013 there is definitely more than just music, but, oh, boy, that music is beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A different kind of arc comes next in the season when The Melville Boys treads the boards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A work by popular playwright and humourist Norm Foster, the production, directed by Theatre Aurora veteran Kay Valentine, follows brothers Owen and Lee Melville at a lakeside cabin for a weekend of fishing. But their time is upended \u201cby the arrival of two sisters who become catalysts for a tenderly funny and unsentimental look at four lives in transition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the brothers has cancer and is going to die \u2013 but in all their conversations, it is funny, one of those Norm Fosters where one minute you\u2019re laughing\u2026 his brother has a really hard time coming to terms with it, and then these two women they meet at a neighbouring cottage\u2026you can do a lot with four characters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She likens it to the classic sitcom M*A*S*H which could have audiences howling one moment and then, all of a sudden, present a \u201cgut punch\u201d that was part and parcel of the wartime setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hope when the audiences leave The Melville Boys they will be able to empathize or at least sympathize with at least one of the characters. It has depth, humour, things about dying and facing death, and it all takes place in this little cabin by the lake. I think we can mostly say that everybody, once you get to a certain age, you\u2019ve had somebody close to you die. We\u2019ve all been there and felt that and this is going to resonate with everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEXT WEEK: The season continues next week with Agatha Christie\u2019s \u201cAnd Then There Were None\u201d and \u201cNoises Off!\u201d a backstage (and front-of-stage) farce by Michael Frayn.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a resounding 2023-2024 season which saw attendance beat pre-pandemic levels, Theatre Aurora is gearing up for a new season of audience favourites. Fresh off last year\u2019s season opener of Anne of Green Gables: The Musical, the new season will once again have toes tapping as Theatre Aurora presents Meredith Wilson\u2019s classic The Music Man, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-95d","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 09:20:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}