The Famous Chronicles

littlelordnyc:

BABES: The Backstory

Hello everybody!

I know you’re busy recovering from your food coma, but I want to give you a head’s up that Little Lord’s BABES IN TOYLAND opens this week. I know you’re thinking - didn’t you do this show already? Well…yes. No. Sort of? (but not really). 

 Our adaptation of BABES received a workshop production at OHIO Theatre’s Ice Factory in 2009. The press called it “the stuff that theatrical dreams are made of.” It was a fun, fabulous “recession spectacular,” and I was a little sad to put it to bed after such a short run. Since that time, Little Lord premiered three new productions and started working on two more. But somewhere in the back of my mind, the opening strains of “Lemonade” kept playing, and I wanted to take another twirl around the maypole.

Anyone who knows me has heard the story of my years in a cult-like performing arts school in Baltimore (home schooled in the mornings/drilled in music and dance in the afternoons). We spent the evenings and weekends rehearsing and performing at the company’s dinner theater, and every December, performed in an adaptation of Victor Herbert’s Babes in Toyland, which has been revived every year since 1981. Some people have been in it for thirty years. For my part, I put in seven years, working my way up from Hickory Dickory Dock to Jack Piper. It was my first (dirty, dirty) love affair with “the theatre.”

This BABES is a ransacking of my own foggy recollections of my time in the trenches, an adaptation of Victor Herbert’s 1903 operetta, and a reworking of 2009’s workshop. So is this the same show? Not quite. Some stuff you may recognize, other stuff is new. Where once we had a cast of twelve, we now only have five. The general “cheap ‘n cheerful” spirit is certainly still there. But most importantly, it’s a lot more personal. I would love to share it with you.

Hope you have a fantastic weekend, and we’ll see you on the other side of the holiday season.

xo, 

Michael

(Photo: Michael Levinton in Babes in Toyland, 1991.)

Little Lord’s BABES IN TOYLAND opens November 30, 2011 at The Brick. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.