Hartford Stage’s ‘Gentleman’s Guide’ nabs 10 nominations

It was a good news/bad news week for Connecticut theaters and producers when the Tony nominations were announced on April 29.

Longtime Trumbull resident Van Dean (and frequent “Stage Buzz” subject), who has been a participating producer on many Broadway shows (including the current hit “Matilda”), made his first foray into being a lead producer with “The Velocity of Autumn,” which opened at the Booth Theatre last month.

Dean was thrilled that his star, Estelle Parsons, received a Tony nomination for best actress in a play, but ticket sales were so slow that he and his partners were forced to close the show on May 4.

The producer is in the midst of many other exciting projects — including several forthcoming releases on his Broadway Records label — but “Velocity” now won’t be able to get a real bump from the nomination or gain traction with a win at next month’s Tony Awards ceremony (a tight race that also includes Tyne Daly and Audra McDonald).

Broadway star Kelli O’Hara, who is married to Weston musician Greg Naughton and who occasionally appears in concert with him and her father-in-law James Naughton, received her fifth Tony nomination for “The Bridges of Madison County.”

O’Hara is perhaps best remembered as a smashing Nellie Forbush in the hit Lincoln Center revival of “South Pacific” and also her performance opposite Connecticut musician/actor Harry Connick Jr. in “The Pajama Game.”

Sadly, the “Bridges” nomination didn’t boost business enough to avoid a May 18 closing notice.

The good Connecticut Tony news was the 10 nominations for “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” which was first produced at Hartford Stage last season. The musical received more nominations than any other Broadway production, including one for best musical and another best direction nomination for Hartford Stage artistic director Darko Tresnjak.

The Tony Awards ceremony will be broadcast live on CBS on Sunday, June 8, at 8 p.m., with Hugh Jackman once again hosting the show.

Gambling on theater

Foxwoods Resort Casino is making a rare foray into theater with “Menopause — the Musical” set for five performances May 24-26.

The show began in a small Florida theater, caught on immediately and has been touring the country for 13 years (including a recent stop at the Klein in Bridgeport and an extended stay at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven).

The show is set in a department store where four menopausal women meet by chance while shopping for a black lace bra at a lingerie sale.

Before the touring show played the Warner Theater in Torrington last year, director/creator Seth Greenleaf told me, “When we started, the word was taboo. … We had our cast sing the national anthem at a baseball game in Boston and they wouldn’t let us put the name of the show on the Jumbotron.

“I think the show transformed the word and its associations through humor and a celebration of women. There was a genuine alchemy,” he said of the impact of the musical about four very different menopausal women who eventually bond at a Bloomingdale’s lingerie sale.

During the course of getting to know each other, the women sing 25 songs about food cravings, hot flashes and the sexual challenges associated with menopause.

“What I really live for is to see an audience enjoy a show and other than `Book of Mormon’ I’ve never seen a show affect an audience the way this one does,” the director said of the laughter at “Menopause — the Musical.

“Usually a director watches a show from the back of the theater, but I like to sit in the front left and watch the audience, which is a show in itself,” Greenleaf added.

Tickets for the Foxwoods engagement may be purchased at www.foxwoods.com or by calling 800-200-2882.

jmeyers@ctpost.com; Twitter: @joesview

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