Pierrot Productions presents the Tony Award-winning musical based on the children’s classic, “The Secret Garden,” at Kelsey Theater, on weekends from Friday, October 10, to Sunday, October 19. A reception with the cast and crew follows the opening night performance on October 10.
Based on the 1911 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the show is set in the early years of the 20th century. Mary Lennox, an English girl born and raised in India, is orphaned by a cholera outbreak and sent to Yorkshire, England, to live with her Uncle Archibald and his invalid son, Colin. Noah Hinsdale of West Windsor portrays Colin Craven.
A fifth grade student at Princeton Friends School, Hinsdale has appeared in McCarter’s “A Christmas Carol” for three years, two as Tiny Tim and one as Turkey Boy. He was also in McCarter’s “Phaedra Backwards.” (The News, December 16, 2011; November 30, 2012; and November 22, 2013). He was onstage in Public Theater’s “Fun Home,” an off Broadway production, and was part of the cast recording last December.
“This is his biggest role yet,” says his mother, Margie, a physical therapist working at RWJ Center for Health and Wellness in Hamilton. His father, John, is a software engineer working on an educational data platform. He has a younger brother named Jonas.
Rider University will present the musical “Lucky Stiff” in the Yvonne Theater in Lawrenceville, through Sunday, October 12. Ethan Daniel Levy of Plainsboro is playing the role of Luigi Gaudi, one of the bad guys who pretends to be an Italian tour guide.
The musical revolves around Harry Witherspoon, a shy British shoe salesman, who finds out that an uncle he never knew has died and left him $6 million. To collect his inheritance Harry must take his uncle’s body to Monte Carlo for one last vacation. But gangsters are hot on his trail to get the money for themselves. What follows is a mad-cap adventure, all at a frantic pace, filled with zany characters, impossible plot twists and turns, mistaken identities, and a surprise ending.
Ben Menahem, also of Plainsboro, is playing the role of Prince Eric in Plays In the Park’s production of “The Little Mermaid” on weekends through Saturday, October 25. He is also portraying George Berger in Villagers Theater’s upcoming production of “Hair” in November.
Shakespeare 70 presents “Circle Mirror Transformation” at West Windsor Arts Center, 952 Alexander Road. The play, focused on five very different people who meet at a community arts center to take an adult acting class, shows what happens over the next six weeks of the class. The play will be on stage weekends from Friday, October 24, to Sunday, November 2.
Scott Karlin of Plainsboro plays the role of James, the husband of Marty, the teacher of the creative drama for adults class. “One of the many things I like about this production is the fact that we are staging it in an actual community center,” says Karlin. “For most plays, such a venue introduces challenges; however, because the show’s setting is a community center, we can embrace it.”
