Events

Thursday, October 15 - Sunday, October 18 & Thursday, October 22 - Sunday, October 25 - Love is Love is a new musical conceived and directed by Martin Charnin (co-creator: Annie) that follows five extraordinary actresses portraying 12 unique women each grappling with the mysteries and complications of love. The musical numbers and monologues highlight a multitude of aspects of that indefinable emotion, from love at first sight with its butterfly beginnings, to keeping love alive, to the dying embers of a love gone wrong.

It stars Andrea McArdle, the original Annie, reuniting with Annie creator, director and lyricist Martin Charnin! McArdle will join the cast, which includes: Avery Sommers, a Broadway veteran and Carbonell winner; along with Patti Eyler and Laura Hodos, both Florida theatrical stalwarts, and Shelly Burch, who starred in the Broadway production of Nine and was on ABC's One Life to Live.

Andrea McArdle first captured the hearts of theatergoers everywhere in 1977 when she originated the title role in the mega-musical Annie, based on the popular Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie. Since then, she has starred in several Broadway musicals, in New York, nationally and internationally. She has performed in concert halls from Carnegie Hall to the Las Vegas Hilton to the Hong Kong Philharmonic. As Annie, she became the youngest performer ever to be nominated for a Tony Award as Best Lead Actress in a Musical. She also received the Theater World and Outer Critics' Circle Awards. Andrea starred in the Jerry Herman musical Jerry's Girls, in the original Broadway cast of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express; Meet Me In St. Louis, They're Playing Our Song, The Fantasticks, the title role in Evita, Les Miserables, the original Broadway cast of State Fair, Oliver!, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Cabaret, Annie Get Your Gun, Gypsy and Grease.

Avery Sommers starred on Broadway in the long-running critically acclaimed musical Ain't Misbehavin' and in Showboat as Queenie. She created the recurring role of Regina Dansby on the CBS soap As the World Turns,  as well as the role of Evelyn on Burt Reynolds' B.L. Stryker. She performed in Menopause the Musical in South Florida, Boston and Connecticut, and won a Carbonell Award for her one-woman show But Not For Me.

Laura Hodos just finished her solo cabaret, Noël & Cole, at the Orlando Cabaret Festival and productions of Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens and The Well of Horniness at the Orlando International Fringe Festival (both received Patron's Pick Awards)! Regional credits include Bombshells at Actors' Playhouse; She Loves Me at Caldwell Theatre; Nine and A Streetcar Named Desire at Seaside Music Theater; Sweeney Todd with Mad Cow Theatre and with Faith Prince and Davis Gaines with Orlando Philharmonic; The Music Man with Orlando Philharmonic and again with Jacksonville Symphony; I Do! I Do!, A Body of Water and City of Angels with Orlando Theatre Project; Suds, Fred Astaire, World Goes 'Round at the Winter Park Playhouse. A New Jersey native, Laura has performed at Lincoln Center with Donna Murphy, and Radio City with Maureen McGovern.

Patti Eyler is most excited to be making her Maltz Jupiter Theatre debut. Throughout her career she has traversed the country working with the famous, the not-so-famous, and the infamous. Favorite roles include Dolly in Hello Dolly!, Gorgeous in The Sisters Rosensweig, Miss Mona in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Golde in Fiddler on the Roof, Truvy in Steel Magnolias, Soap Star in Menopause the Musical and whatever she happens to be doing at the time.

Shelly Burch arrived in New York City and landed a co-starring role on Broadway, in Stop the World I Want to Get Off, with Sammy Davis Jr., followed by a two-year stint in Annie. She originated the role of Claudia in Tommy Tune's Nine. ABC-TV then tapped her for a role on One Life to Live, playing the devilish Delila for eight years. She returned to her recording career, with the release of the 30th anniversary Time-Life album of Annie and Annie 2. Most recently, she opened the 92nd St. Y's Lyrics and Lyricists's 2009 season co-starring in Rodgers &..., a tribute to Richard Rodgers and his five collaborators, the last of which was her husband, Martin Charnin. Her latest New York appearance, which garnered rave reviews, was last spring at the Metropolitan Room.

Martin Charnin created the role of Big Deal in the original Broadway production of West Side Story, and played the role for more than 1,000 performances. He has been the director, lyricist, composer, librettist, producer or combination of those for more than 125 productions including Annie, Annie Warbucks, the rock Joan of Arc, the revised Cole Porter Can-Can, The First, On the Swing Shift, Mata Hari, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, I Remember Mama and Two By Two (both with music by Richard Rodgers), Zenda (with music by Vernon Duke), the Gershwin's Strike Up the Band, and in London, Bar Mitzvah Boy, three productions of Annie, a revival of Bless the Bride, and The 9 ½ Quid Review. His Tony Award-winning Annie, for which he wrote the lyrics, co-created, and directed, is the 22nd longest-running American musical in Broadway history. He has directed Annie's 10 national companies as well as companies in Amsterdam and Australia.

He has received four Tony nominations, two Tony Awards, six Grammy Awards, three Emmy Awards, three Gold records, two Platinum records, six Drama Desk Awards, the Peabody Award for broadcasting, and most recently another Grammy Award for Jay-Z's rap album, Hard Knock Life, which went triple platinum.

Future projects include a new musical with a score by Harold Arlen, Winchell, a musical written with Keith Levenson, Robin Hood, with Thomas Meehan (his Annie book writer) and Peter Sipos (Joan of Arc). His other recent productions are Time-Life's double disc, Annie 30th Anniversary production album, which also includes songs from Annie 2, and the continuing national tour of Annie, Rodgers &... (a 62-song tribute to Richard Rodgers) which debuted in Seattle and then opened the 2009 season at the 92nd St. Y. What followed was Second Coming, a one-woman entertainment for his wife, Shelly Burch, which opened at New York City's newest bistro, The Metropolitan Room.

He has just been named the Artistic Director of Seattle's Showtunes Theatre Company, which will be producing three concertized musicals in association with Seattle Theatre Group (STG) and Broadway Across America (BAA) in Showtunes' new home, the Moore Theatre.

 

Showtimes: Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30pm, Saturdays at 2 and 8pm and Sundays at 2pm.