northumberland players present
2019-2020 Season
A new season is always exciting.
We have worked hard to select plays that will inspire and engage everyone from directors, actors, and volunteers to patrons of all ages. These nine plays are stories about friendship, family, love, historical events and heartbreak, from some of the world’s best known playwrights, including Noel Coward, Neil Simon, Arthur Miller, and two of the hottest contemporary writer’s in North America, Sarah Ruhl and Lauren Gunderson. If you know musicals you will recognize the most famous names Kander, Ebb and Fosse as we mount the very ambitious musical Chicago.
The Players perform in four venues:
Firehall Theatre
The intimate Firehall theatre opens with a classic Noel Coward comedy, Blithe Spirit: ghostly, funny and smart.
A new period piece, Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, written by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon, is fresh yet traditional. Gunderson’s Silent Sky nearly sold out at the Fireahall last season; no wonder she is the most produced playwright in North America right now. A story from Pride and Prejudice with its period costumes combined with Christmas will no doubt sell out.
In the New Year we bring you perhaps Arthur Miller’s best known play All My Sons. It is a timeless piece of drama set just after WWII with powerful acting and huge universal themes.
The final show of the Firehall season is You Will Remember Me by a great French Canadian playwright François Archambault, a story of family and love and the importance of memory. Everyone with aging parents will relate to this poignant and funny story. Stories like this connect us as we navigate life’s experiences.
CONCERT HALL AT VICTORIA HALL
Victoria Concert Hall will be transformed into Victorian England for the holidays where families can make memories together.
Our Youth Theatre will perform the classic A Christmas Carol during the day for over two thousand students in the county. The general public can sneak a peak of our quality family Youth Theatre show at two weekend matinees.
BEST WESTERN PLUS INN & CONVENTION CENTRE
Our dinner theatres at the Best Western Plus Inn & Convention Centre are attracting audiences from Kingston to Toronto. This year we have perhaps the most diverse dinner theatre lineup in our history.
Stage Kiss by Sarah Ruhl is new comedy which has taken North America by storm; it is edgy, sexy and hip.
Our middle show is a classic Neil Simon play, The Sunshine Boys. After the huge success of The Odd Couple we thought we would follow up with this hilarious play made famous by the 1975 movie with George Burns and Walter Matthau.
And finally for something completely different! We bring Nashville to Cobourg. The Honky Tonk Angels by Ted Swindley, a funny script, all the famous country hits from Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton and others, and a six piece country band will make this evening something you have never seen at dinner theatre before.
CAMECO CAPITOL ARTS CENTRE
Finally, our most anticipated musical in years. After 15 years of applying for the performance rights for Chicago, Northumberland Players finally got the news from New York that we have the licence.
Chicago, the longest running revival in Broadway history, with its sizzling Fosse style choreography, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb will transform the Cameco Capitol Arts Centre into the Jazz Age. Big musical theatre in an intimate atmospheric space and a live orchestra – that is how everyone should experience musical theatre.
We have something for everyone and everything for someone.
The season is balanced with titles you have no doubt heard of but some perhaps that you have not. Be adventurous; see shows you have never seen or shows you know nothing about.
Sign up as a volunteer and tick the boxes to ensure that you receive notices about how you can get involved in a production.
The 2019/20 season is where the traditional and contemporary meet in four venues. We will not disappoint.
Jack Boyagian
President and Artistic Director