What's Happening

Avenue Q opens this Thursday at Chestnut Street Playhouse!

The irreverent take on Sesame Street, the winner of the TONY "Triple Crown" for Best Musical, Best Score and Best Book, is being boarded up at the Chestnut Street Playhouse in Norwich (the town that rivals Dublin for the most incomprehensible traffic patterns). The Playhouse warns: this is not Sesame Street and is not recommended for children. Why? Well, “PORN!” Performances April 14 - May 1; Thursday - Saturday, 7:30pm, Sunday, 2:00pm Tickets: $25 and available online or by calling the box office at 860.886.2378

“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)”

Up in Goshen, the Goshen Players will be offering the Bard Lite. It’s all Will’s plays done in less than 90 minutes (Hell, it takes longer than that to figure out what the hell is happening in “Cymbeline”). Obviously, it’s a spoof that will be running April 22, 23, 29, 30, May 6 & 7 at 8:00 pm; April 24, May 1 at 3:00 pm at the Old Goshen Town Hall, 2 North Street. All tickets are reserved seating at $22. Call 860.491.9988 or go to www.goshenplayers.org

Long Wharf Winds Down Season with “My Paris”

Long Wharf Theatre travels back in time to the romance and fun of Montmartre in the late 1800s in its production of the musical My Paris, a imaginative retelling of the life of the artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, directed by Tony Award-winning director Kathleen Marshall, with music from the legendary French performer Charles Aznavour, and a book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Alfred Uhry, and with English lyrics and musical adaptations by Tony-winner Jason Robert Brown (The Last Five Years).

The production runs from May 4 through May 29 on the Claire Tow Stage in the C. Newton Schenck III Theatre. The press night is Wednesday, May 11 at 7:30 pm. Tickets are from $25 to $85.

My Paris sketches the life and times of the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who lovingly rendered the gaiety, color, and heartbreak of Montmartre, the can-can, and the world of Le Moulin Rouge.

The book is by Oscar, Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winner Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy and The Last Night of the Ballyhoo).

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit longwharf.org or call 203-787-4282.

Yale Rep Presents Two-time Oscar Winner Dianne Wiest in Samuel Beckett’s “Happy days”

The show runs April 29–May 21 at Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street). Opening Night is Thursday, May 5.

About the play: with her husband increasingly out of reach and the earth itself threatening to swallow her whole, Winnie’s buoyant optimism shields her from the harsh glare of the inevitable in this absurdly funny and boundlessly compassionate portrait of the human spirit.

Tickets for HAPPY DAYS range from $20–99 and are available online at yalerep.org, by phone at (203) 432-1234, and in person at the Yale Rep Box Office (1120 Chapel Street). Student, senior, and group rates are also available.

A World Premiere

“Lewiston” by Samuel Hunter opens Wednesday, April 13 at Long Wharf in New Haven.

Alice and Connor sit by their roadside stand selling cheap fireworks while developers swallow the land around them. Promised a condo in the new development, their future is secure. Enter Marnie, Alice’s long lost granddaughter, proposing to buy the land to save her family legacy. Marnie and Alice will become reacquainted with each other’s deeply held secrets, uncertain pasts, and hopeful futures. Hunter, a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship recipient, explores the emotional frontiers of a family struggling to make a home in the vastness of the American landscape with affection, poignancy, and a profound sense of empathy.

Please call the Long Wharf Theatre Box Office:  (203) 787-4282.