Published: December 30, 2008 05:01 pm      

Playhouse announces shows for 45th season

Cumberland County Playhouse’s 45th season opens in the Adventure Theater Jan. 24, with Academy Award and Tony Award-winning On Golden Pond, starring prominent film and TV actor Steve Ayers as Norman Thayer, the great Henry Fonda’s final film role, along with Carol Irvin as wife Ethel. Ayers, recently retired from Western Carolina University’s faculty, has joined the theater’s education staff. On Golden Pond is sponsored by Dr. Stanley Bise, MD.

The Playhouse Mainstage opens Feb. 13 with Jason Ross and Daniel Black in the starring roles of Seussical, the new Broadway musical drawn from the stories and characters of Dr. Seuss. Chattanooga’s Ross, beginning his 13th CCP season, plays Horton the elephant, with Black as the chameleon-like Cat in the Hat, whose antics and multiple characterizations make him the ringmaster of this circus of Seuss. Seussical is sponsored by CCP Education Sponsor Hughes Real Estate Services.

“Seussical is for the whole family," says director/choreographer Michele Colvin, "especially for parents and grandparents who’ve loved reading to kids, and for everyone who has grown up with the wit and wisdom Dr. Seuss."

The musical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty combines characters and stories from several famous Dr. Seuss books, and is expected to have great appeal for church, family and school outings.

North Carolina’s Steve Ayers, a Maryville College grad, also portrays Virginia farmer Charlie Anderson in the Mainstage Civil War musical Shenandoah, joining the rep on March 19, sponsored by M. Stewart Galloway, MD/Cumberland Eye Care. Based on the James Stewart movie, Shenandoah is a stirring work of valor and patriotism, of honor and conscience, war and peace, which played to sellout crowds at the Playhouse in 1988 and ’90.

Smoke on the Mountain, sponsored by Cracker Barrell, returns on April 16, followed by Jason Ross, Carol Irvin and Daniel Black in The Foreigner, the wild comedy that is the theater’s most requested show. The Foreigner is sponsored by Comfort Suites, Holiday Inn Express, and Hampton Inn. And the women of Ivy Gap, Tennessee return in ’09 with the Tennessee Premiere of Showtime at First Baptist, the sequel to First Baptist at Ivy Gap, and the musicals It’s a Wonderful Life, sponsored by Looney and Chadwell Title Services/Kenneth and Carol Ann Chadwell, and Camelot, sponsored by Discovery Depot, Mariner’s Pointe, and Tennessee Heart. Tickets and details of CCP’s 12-show rotating repertory season and concert series are at 931-484-5000 and www.ccplayhouse.com.