Press Release

Cleveland’s Classic Theater Company Commences 45^th Year with Spring Repertory

February 20, 2007

GTLF Producing Artistic Director, Charles Fee stages Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and Festival Associate Artistic Director Andrew May makes his directorial debut with Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

CLEVELAND, OH – Great Lakes Theater Festival (GLTF) will conclude its 45^th season with a new Spring Repertory that features Noel Coward’s classic comedy, Hay Fever (Fever) and William Shakespeare’s fantastic farewell to the theater, The Tempest (Tempest). The productions will be performed in rotating repertory at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center, March 16 – April 21, 2007. The Spring Repertory features a single company of eighteen actors performing two alternating plays on the same stage over six weeks. Festival Producing Artistic Director, Charles Fee, will direct Hay Fever and GLTF Associate Artistic Director, Andrew May, will make his GLTF directorial debut with The Tempest.

Great Lakes Theater Festival’s 2007 Spring Repertory is presented with generous support from Moen Incorporated and The Reinberger Foundation. Media sponsors for the Festival’s 2007 season are Cleveland Free Times, Cleveland Magazine, WCLV 104.9 and WCPN 90.3 ideastream.

“Our forty-fifth year of producing Shakespeare and the classics has been artistically remarkable and wildly popular,” said Charles Fee, of the GLTF’s current season. “During the first half of the 2006-07 season, Fall Repertory attendance grew 13% over last year and A Christmas Carol exceeded all income projections. In addition, our subscriber base has grown again for the second consecutive year. That’s an increase of 37% in season ticket attendance over the last two seasons. We look forward to continuing this period of incredible audience growth and artistic achievement with our upcoming Spring Repertory productions of Hay Fever and The Tempest These great plays are in the hands of a truly gifted artistic company and I can’t wait to share their work with Northeast Ohio.”

The Festival’s Spring Repertory opens with Noel Coward’s comedy Hay Fever. In Hay Fever, a quiet weekend at the country home of the delectably dysfunctional Bliss family is decidedly destroyed when an outrageous assortment of unsuspecting houseguests begin to arrive. Nothing could have prepared the visitors for the chaos to come. An innocent visit with the eccentric Bliss family deteriorates into a magnificent maelstrom of misguided passions and delightfully disastrous parlor games. Classic comedy takes center stage in Noel Coward’s evening of blissfully bad behavior.

William Shakespeare’s The Tempest rounds out the Festival’s Spring Repertory. Tempted by spirits, teased by sprites, and tormented by monsters, a King and his party, shipwrecked on a mysterious enchanted island, must face the wrath of the conjurer, Prospero – a man they marooned and betrayed years ago. Along the way, lovers are united, villainy uncovered, and passions unleashed within the brilliant framework of a magical comic romance. William Shakespeare’s final glorious gift to the world is a compelling tale of betrayal, revenge and redemption.

The directors of both Spring Repertory productions are familiar faces for Festival audiences. GLTF’s Producing Artistic Director, Charles Fee, will celebrate the completion of his fifth season with the Festival when he directs Noel Coward’s Hay Fever to open the Spring Repertory. Fever represents the first Noel Coward offering in a GLTF season since the company’s winter 2004 production of Private Lives. Fee most recently directed Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest for GLTF in 2004. Andrew May, GLTF’s Associate Artistic Director and a veteran member of the Festival’s acting company, will accept a new role for the Festival when he makes his main stage directorial debut with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Since first appearing with the Festival in 2003 as Bottom in A Midsummer Night Dream, May has also played roles in Hamlet, Tartuffe, A Christmas Carol, Private Lives , The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives of Windsor, You Can’t Take It With You, Amadeus and Love’s Labour’s Lost .

“We are thrilled to conclude our 45th season with an amazing pair of classics like Hay Fever and The Tempest,” said Charles Fee of the upcoming Spring Repertory. “On behalf of everyone at the Festival, I would like to say ‘thank you’ to Northern Ohio for making this season such an exciting and successful one for us. You’ve demonstrated that this community believes in the power of the classics and in the future of Great Lakes Theater Festival. From this foundation, we feel poised to begin an exciting new era – one that will set the course for the future of this company and revolutionize how audiences experience theater. We can’t wait to share our bold new plans with you. In the meantime, we invite you to join us downtown at the Ohio Theatre for an amazing night of classic theater…or two …this spring!”

Opening Night performances of Hay Fever (March 17th) and The Tempest (March 31st) have been scheduled for Saturday evenings with preview performances of both productions scheduled for Friday nights. Curtain times for all evening performances will remain at 7:30 p.m., with a 1:30 p.m. curtain time for Saturday matinees and a 3:00 p.m. curtain time for Sunday matinees. Both productions in GLTF’s Spring Repertory will continue to offer sign-interpreted and audio-described performances as well as the popular Director’s Night and Playnotes pre-show discussion series. (Consult the enclosed production calendar for a complete list of performance dates and times.)

Single tickets for Great Lakes Theater Festival productions range in price from $22-$56 (Student tickets $13 – any performance / any seat) and are available by calling (216) 241-6000, by ordering online by visiting the Playhouse Square Center Ticket Office. Students, educators and groups of ten or more receive discounts.

Since 1962, Great Lakes Theater Festival has brought the pleasure, power and relevance of classic theater to the widest possible audience in Northern Ohio. The first resident company of Playhouse Square Center, the Festival has called the Ohio Theatre home since 1982.

At A Glance: Hay Fever

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association

At A Glance: The Tempest

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association

Reviews: Hay Fever

Cleveland Jewish News
Hay Fever at Great Lakes is great ensemble acting
By Fran Heller

At the close of Act I of Hay Fever, Noel Coward’s comedy soufflé about the eccentric, ill-mannered Bliss family, all the characters are taking tea, sitting in uneasy silence with teacups suspended in mid-air.

It’s a stunning visual tableau and only one example of the superlative ensemble acting that ripples through the Great Lakes Theater Festival production running through April 21. Superbly directed by Charles Fee, artistic director of GLTF, Hay Fever is pure froth. But never has such silliness been so sublime.

The action takes place at the Blisses’ country home. Unbeknownst to the others, each family member has invited a guest for the weekend. Judith Bliss, a perennially retired actress, has invited amateur boxer Sandy, a younger man infatuated with the celebrated star. Judith’s husband David writes romance novels. His guest is the dimwitted flapper Jackie, whom he wishes to observe as a character study.

Sorel and Simon are the Bliss offspring. Hungry for some normalcy, Sorel has invited stuffy diplomatist Richard, while Simon, eager to flex his manhood, has asked an older woman, socialite Myra Arundel.

The bohemian Blisses are a quarrelsome, bad-mannered lot who either ignore their guests or treat them rudely. All hell breaks loose when the hosts play switcheroo and the flummoxed guests end up with different partners.

The Bliss family is based on real life eccentrics, whom Coward met on a trip to New York. His hostess, actress Laurette Taylor, and her playwright husband Hartley Manners played the kind of word games that open Act II.

Hay Fever, written in three days when Coward was in his mid-20s, was the first of his plays to be considered a masterpiece. It was a success in London in 1925 but flopped on Broadway.

Coward draws heavily on his theatrical background as both actor and playwright. His characters are theatrical and artistic types: narcissistic, temperamental and egotistical. Constant bickering and verbal fencing are the hallmarks of his plays.

There is little in the way of plot or character development. It is all situation and razor-sharp wit. “We none of us ever mean anything,” says Sorel Bliss wisely.

The success of Coward’s comedies depends upon the actors’ abilities to carry off the fast tempo and volley of brilliant dialogue. Under Fee’s airtight direction and a fabulous cast who play off each other in perfect harmony, this delightful production doesn’t skip a beat. Fee keeps the high comedy from spilling over into farce, and the three-act play whizzes by.

Role-playing is what binds the Blisses together. Unbeknownst to their guests, their unconventional behavior is all an act. For this family, there is no distinction between life and art. Their lunacy is a kind of “hay fever” and an antidote against boredom.

The guests are foils for the family’s theatrics and no match for their manipulative and clever hosts.

It’s a comedy of “bad” manners in which the dramatic and self-absorbed Blisses play “get the guests.” (It’s likely that Edward Albee drew his own model for the games George and Martha play in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” from the comic master Coward.)

Judith is the comic linchpin. She bursts upon the scene in the first act, shedding her garden galoshes with grandiose insouciance. The play moves into comedic high gear in the second act when the games begin.

As the flamboyant Judith, Kathleen Pirkl Tague’s melodramatic mood shifts are comic acting at its best. Tague’s over-the-top performance is so smooth that it is hard to tell when she is playing Judith as Judith or Judith the actress in a scene from her last play.

Judith manipulates Richard into trying to seduce her. “David’s been a good husband, but he’s wearing a bit thin,” she sighs. When Richard takes the bait, she instantly dons the mask of the contrite wife. “David must be told everything,” emotes Judith, waving her handkerchief with great flourish.

Catching Sorel and Sandy kissing, she instantly becomes the rejected older woman. Upon discovering Myra and David locked in an embrace, she becomes the wronged wife willing to relinquish her husband.

Regal Laura Perrotta is exquisite as Judith’s foil, the sharp-tongued Myra. Sparks fly between the two women as they trade barbs and insults. Myra sees through the family’s pretense, describing the Blisses as an infuriating set of hypocrites.

Aled Davies, as the self-absorbed husband David, is the unflappable straight man to Judith’s histrionics. Jeffrey C. Hawkins and Sara M. Bruner are excellent as the insufferably precocious siblings Simon and Sorel, who dress and behave like grownup adolescents.

Laura Welsh is adorable as the insipid Jackie Coryton, moved to tears by her hosts’ horrid treatment of their guests, especially David, who invited her and can’t even remember who she is. A ruffled Jackie is soothed by Sandy (Lynn Robert Berg), an affable chap who, like Jackie, is dumbfounded by his lunatic hosts. David Anthony Smith is suitably stodgy as the strait-laced Richard Greatham. Elizabeth Ann Townsend is adequate as the long-suffering, disgruntled housekeeper Clara.

Gage Williams’s casually elegant replica of the book-strewn English country home, offset by the requisite grand piano, handsomely sets the stage.

Nicole Frachiseur’s tony costumes mirror the upper class social milieu. The elegant attire in the second act is a ravishing variation on black and red.

Hay Fever is a trifle of a play, but the GLTF production is a grand work of art.

The Cleveland Free Times
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Hay Ride: Gltf Mounts a Venerable Coward War Horse
By James Damico

Noel Coward reigned as both the visible king and mostly invisible queen of British comedy theater throughout the 1920s and ’30s. And while he might’ve preferred to hold court sporting a tiara rather than a crown, he wisely – no doubt mindful of Oscar Wilde’s tragic experience – maintained a publicly straight face and straighter persona.

He was nonetheless literarily allied to Wilde as his unnatural offspring. Coward’s plays wrongly came to be categorized as updated repositories of Oscar-ish limpid aphorisms and bon mots, interspersed between tea and crumpets, and delivered with pursed lips and raised pinkies. No judgment could be more cocksuredly cockeyed.

Coward’s comedies are rather muscularly debonair displays populated by charmingly iconoclastic, egotistical characters, who are self-congratulatorily neurotic, pugnaciously sophisticated, terminally frivolous, and more likely to utter a trendy brand name than a maxim. Where Coward truly coincided with Wilde was as a social-critic mole, subversively puncturing the foibles of an elite willing to laughingly embrace a censorious genius, just as long as his outsider homosexuality remained covert.

Shrewdly channeling his societal reproaches into the profitable formulation of comedy, Coward achieved instant success with the 1925 Hay Fever. A progenitor of wacky, but lovable stage families, the bohemian Blisses are Fever’s blurred focus. Theoretically retired but constantly rehearsing her big comeback scenes, Judith is the diva matriarch, David the money-making potboiler novelist father, Sorrel the spoiled daughter and Simon the wastrel son.

All are idiosyncratically eccentric and – the play’s complicating device – all have secretly invited romantic prospects on the same weekend to their country house for ostensible assignations. But, as this is a British not French farce, nobody winds up actually doing anything to anybody. After dizzying dallying with the supposed matches and a few rematches of their own, the exasperated guests finally flee from their self-obsessed, barely noticing hosts in a unified body, leaving the author’s class dispargement in their wake.

Great Lakes Theater Festival’s approach to Noel Coward has not been notably subtle. The sophistication of its 2004 Private Lives was considerably adulterated by pesky intrusions of pratfalls, crotch-grabbings and spit takes. Thankfully, under artistic director Charles Fee’s guidance, Fever elevates the tone to mere strenuous punching-up of lines and clownish exaggeration of stage business. Though Kathleen Pirki Tague resorts to more bellows than a ’20s diva might indulge in at home, she exhibits a convincingly self-involved grandiosity to get away with it. As her daughter and a visiting flapper, Sara Bruner and Laura Welch trade on a faux-naive seductiveness, while Laura Perrotta’s worldly woman is just as seductively womanly, and Elizabeth Ann Townsend’s servant is anything but servile. David Anthony Smith’s diplomat couldn’t be stuffier, although Lynn Robert Berg’s prize-fighter could be beefier. Aled Davies is as laid-back as sex novelists get, whereas the wonderful physical comedian Jeffrey Hawkins is perhaps a bit too acrobatic to be a truly compelling wastrel son.

Yet fair enough. We optimists can only live in the trust that such understandably coersive appeals for certified laughs as the present offering entreats – to which the opening-night crowd readily responded – is a transitional, tutorial phase for both audience and producer, which will ultimately lead to GLTF theatrical investigations that dig deeper into what such masters as the king-queen of 20th-century British theatrical comedy were really all about.

The Akron Beacon Journal
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Catch big laughs at Hay Fever: Kooky family’s hilarious antics are pure bliss at Great Lakes Theater Festival
By Kerry Clawson, Beacon Journal business writer

Watching oddball characters putting on airs doesn’t get more fun than at Great Lakes Theater Festival, which opens its spring repertory season with Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever.

The marvelous Kathleen Pirkl Tague leads the way as Judith Bliss, mistress of the country manor, with all of her “retired” actress’s histrionics. Director Charles Fee lets us know from the play’s opening lines that everything is a mocking game or a big act for the Bliss family: Even Judith’s children, Simon and Sorel, speak with dramatic flair out toward the audience instead of actually delivering their lines to each other. In doing so, Fee makes a big wink to the audience from the play’s onset.

This sparkling 1925 comedy requires a perfectly meshed cast with impeccable comedic timing. Fee has chosen an exceptional nine-member cast that plays beautifully off one another, featuring mainly actors who have been regulars in the GLTF company.

The play is set in the English countryside at the Bliss home, where each family member has invited a guest of the opposite sex to visit for the weekend, unbeknownst to the others. But the Blisses couldn’t care less about being hosts, so the guests have to fend for themselves through a disastrous weekend that includes more than a couple of couplings.

The end of this comedy’s second act is deliriously funny as the Bliss family toys with their guests and all hell breaks loose.

Some of the biggest laughs come from the characters Judith and Sorel’s mother-daughter rivalry, handled to perfection by Pirkl Tague and Sara Bruner. Bruner’s Sorel is well aware of her actress mother’s abundant dramatics, yet she alternately “plays up” to her or calls her bluffs.

Sorel – the closest thing to a realist in the family – tells her mother she’s “cheap” for encouraging the attentions of callow young men. In another scene, when Judith is acting like a prude, Sorel tells her to “be natural for a minute.”

The wonderfully memorable Judith has a great need to create drama in her life, whether pretending she’s the picture of motherly perfection in lovely poses with her children, or turning someone’s romantic advances toward her into a major melodrama. As Sorel says, “her sense of the theater is always fatal.”

Laura Perotta’s stylish Myra puts on an act of her own as she fends off the amorous Simon (Jeffrey Hawkins), who literally jumps around in his giddiness. Added to the mix of guests are diplomat Richard Greatham (David Anthony Smith), dumb flapper Jackie (Laura Welsh) and young admirer Sandy (Lyn Robert Berg).

Aled Davies has a smaller role as Judith’s writer husband, David Bliss, but he shows us the whole family is totally self-absorbed. And local actress Elizabeth Ann Townsend does a fun turn as irritated cockney servant Clara.

In this quirky family, only Sorel seems to regret behaving rudely to their guests, proclaiming “We’re a beastly family and I hate us.”

It’s priceless to see all the members of the eccentric family staring one of their guests down as if he were an intruder. In this wacky story, we’re meant to believe they only vaguely recognize him by the next morning.

It will be interesting to see this delightful cast take on next a tale of sheer enchantment – Shakespeare’s comic romance The Tempest, which runs in repertory with Hay Fever through April 20.

Cool Cleveland
GLTF’s Hay Fever
By Kelly Ferjutz

They just don’t write ‘em like this anymore, which is a sad state of affairs! Thank goodness for Charles Fee and his slightly-manic sense of the absurd. And, of course, major props to Noel Coward for having written such delightful fluff in the first place! Witty and literate do it for me every time! If you like to laugh, Hay Fever should do it for you, too.

The Bliss family – mother Judith, a noted actress of a certain age; father David, an author of uncertain stature in the book world; daughter Sorel and son Simon – live together, sort of, with their maid of all work, Clara, in a great English country house. Sort of, because they are really all isolationists, each busily doing their own thing, oblivious to the rest of the world.

One fine spring weekend, the four of them have each invited a guest for the weekend. Sane, sensible people all, these guests are no match for the Blisses, who are so busy being themselves they totally miss the fact that the guests have all departed, leaving the family all alone, delightedly snipping at each other. The departure also leaves the audience laughing hysterically, especially in this production.

Director Charles Fee gleefully unleashes the Blisses on the world in this not-quite over-the-top production, in which all the elements come together splendidly. The set by Gage Williams is inviting and authentic looking, and in combination with the lighting of Rick Martin and sound of Peter John Still, happily transports the viewer to 1920s England. Costumes by Nicole Frachiseur mostly work well, especially those for the women. (David’s formal wear in the second act doesn’t quite work as well as it should – he rather looks like a butcher, although a high-class butcher, to be sure.)

The acting is on a very high level. Kathleen Firkl Tague really sinks her teeth into the role of Judith, the slightly aging drama queen. Aled Davies is marvelous as David, his attitudes as changeable as the weather. As Sorel, Sara Bruner is coltish at one moment, the grown-up young lady the next, charming in either mode, while Jeffrey C. Hawkins as Simon behaves as though he was made of rubber, slithering here and there, trying to find his artistic self. Elizabeth Ann Townsend is the overworked Clara, who manages to keep tabs on things, anyway.

As the bewildered guests, Laura Perrotta (the femme fatale), David Anthony Smith (the diplomatist), Laura Welsh (the ingenue) and Lynn Robert Berg (the athletic type) are marvelously adrift in these strange surroundings.

Reviews: The Tempest

The Cleveland Free Times
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Saucy Sorcery: GLTF Conjures Comedy From Willie’s Tempest
By James Damico

Not only is Andrew May the closest thing the Great Lakes Theater Festival has to a matinee idol, but he’s even more renowned – we hesitate to say notorious – for being its leading farceur. So it’s hardly a life-altering shock to find that his GLTF directing debut turns out to be the most determinedly comic take on The Tempest you’re likely to encounter in a goodly spell. The happy news is that, while slighting many of the play’s more profound aspects, the approach never betrays its serious essence and, consequently, makes for a guiltlessly entertaining romp through Shakespeare’s more elegant anticipation of a Lost episode.

Generally considered to be the Bard’s last effort, The Tempest is also universally regarded as his deliberate farewell to the theater. And to be sure, who could resist identifying the author with the necromancer Prospero, when just prior to voluntarily relinquishing his occult powers, he movingly issues his famous adieu: “Our revels now are ended. These our actors,/ As I foretold you, were all spirits and/Are melted into air … We are such stuff/As dreams are made on, and our little life/Is rounded with a sleep.”

Thought to be inspired by an actual Bermudan shipwreck, The Tempest’s plot is among Willie’s least complicated. Chance brings the usurpers of Prospero’s duchy of Milan – his treacherous brother Antonio and the conspiring King of Naples – within reach of the uncharted island where the exile and his daughter Miranda have found refuge for 12 years, while she’s grown up and he’s perfected his conjuring arts.

Thus able to create the illusion of a shipwreck, he brings his enemies under the spell of his domain – a primeval wilderness inhabited by supernatural spirits. Chief among these are Ariel, whom Prospero has adopted as his magical go-fer, and Caliban, the reptilian spawn of a witch, whom he’s bound into unwilling servitude. Before finally quitting the island, sorcerer Prospero bloodlessly directs his revenge, the restoration of his title, the rehabilitation of his foes, the freeing of both Ariel and Caliban, and the union of Miranda with the King’s son, Ferdinand.

Rejecting trendy updates and dim-bulb “bright ideas” that have habitually infected myriad theaters (including his own), presumably meant to save history’s greatest dramatist from all his various incompetencies, May blissfully sets his production in its own time and – except for the comic emphasis – shapes it with relative orthodoxy. His one major departure is to physically divide Ariel into two actors. The purpose here, however, is not to make some esoteric phenomenological statement, but simply to foster the idea of the character’s magical ability to be in two places at once.

And, in the twin persons of Sara Bruner and Christine Fallon, it delightfully does. The former in particular is a restless, windmilling, set-climbing, somersaulting charmer who seems perpetually entangled in an acrobatic game of Twister with an invisible gaggle of fellow sprites. By some measure, Bruner delivers the evening’s most winning performance.

Considerably diminished, however, by the comic stress is Lynn Robert Berg’s Caliban. Rather than the intended fearsome, loathsome embodiment of pernicious evil – after all, his most repeated desire is to rape Miranda – the creature is treated from the start as a hulking, unthreatening butt of jokes, a lovable shaggy pet more to be joshed than jailed. This sacrifices a not unimportant thematic dimension.

The concept also denies Aled Davies’ fine Prospero of most of his magisterial component, rendering him a clever, regular-guy survivor instead of the noble sovereign Shakespeare had in mind, who re-earns his royal throne through the painfully tempering fire of bitter exile. Laura Welch and David Gregory make an attractive pair of awkwardly fledging lovers, while Richard McWilliams, Dougfred Miller and David Anthony Smith are suitably bewitched, bothered and totally bewildered conspirators – although why Smith feels compelled to shout every line is more bewildering still.

In the circumstances, the traditional low-comedy scenes between jester Trinculo and sloshed butler Stephano have to be ratcheted up several notches to make their points, and while the always amusing Jeffrey Hawkins and the able M. A. Taylor are mostly funny, both they and we could use an occasional breather from the unrelenting push to knock ’em dead.

I strongly doubt, though, old practical Willie would have any real complaints. It’s obvious that the folks at GLTF unabashedly love him and honor – though occasionally mess with – his quill scratchings and are only out to win him new fans, which this engaging production will surely do. What more could the Immortal Bard ask? That is, besides to keep on peddling those T-shirts with his mug on them.

Photos: Hay Fever

Kathleen Pirkl Tague as Judith Bliss (left) and Sara M. Bruner as Sorel Bliss (right) star in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever to open the classic theater company’s new Spring Repertory. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Steven Mastroianni
A Blissful bunch. Kathleen Pirkl Tague as Judith Bliss consoles her children Simon (played by Jeffrey C. Hawkins, left) and Sorel (played Sara M. Bruner, right) in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever to open the classic theater company’s new Spring Repertory. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Steven Mastroianni		Veteran GLTF actor Aled Davies takes center stage as David Bliss in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever to open the classic theater company’s new Spring Repertory. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Steven Mastroianni
Kathleen Pirkl Tague stars as Judith Bliss in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever to open the classic theater company’s new Spring Repertory. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Steven Mastroianni
Blissfully bad behavior abounds at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center. Lynn Robert Berg as Sandy Tyrell (left) and Kathleen Pirkl Tague as Judith Bliss (right) star in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of the Noel Coward comedy Hay Fever to open the classic theater company’s new Spring Repertory. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Steven Mastroianni
Cleveland favorite Laura Perrotta takes center stage as Myra Arundel in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever to open the classic theater company’s new Spring Repertory. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Steven Mastroianni
Cleveland favorite Laura Perrotta takes center stage as Myra Arundel in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever to open the classic theater company’s new Spring Repertory. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Steven Mastroianni
Cleveland favorite Jeffrey C. Hawkins takes center stage as Simon Bliss in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever to open the classic theater company’s new Spring Repertory. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Steven Mastroianni
David Anthony Smith plays the stylish Richard Greatham in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever to open the classic theater company’s new Spring Repertory. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Steven Mastroianni
Cleveland favorite Sara M. Bruner takes center stage as Sorel Bliss in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever to open the classic theater company’s new Spring Repertory. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Steven Mastroianni
It’s an evening of blissfully bad behavior as Great Lakes Theater Festival’s resident acting company presents Noel Coward’s comedy Hay Fever to open its new Spring Repertory. The production features actors (from left to right) Jeffrey C. Hawkins (as Simon Bliss), Laura Welsh (as Jackie Coryton), Aled Davies (as David Bliss), Laura Perrotta (as Myra Arundel), Sara M. Bruner (as Sorel Bliss) and David Anthony Smith (as Richard Greatham). The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Steven Mastroianni

Photos: The Tempest

A Father and a daughter bond. Laura Welsh as Miranda and Aled Davies as Prospero share a tender moment in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Spring Repertory production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Tempest runs in rotating repertory with Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Roger Mastroianni
Veteran company member Lynn Robert Berg takes center stage as Caliban in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Spring Repertory production of William Shakespeare’s final glorious gift to the theater, The Tempest. The production runs in rotating repertory with Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Roger Mastroianni		Charmed. Dougfred Miller (Antonio, below) stands steadfast under the spell of Sara M. Bruner (Ariel, above) in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Spring Repertory production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The production runs in rotating repertory with Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Roger Mastroianni
Send in the clowns. Jeffrey C. Hawkins as Trinculo (left), Lynn Robert Berg as Caliban (center) and M.A. Taylor (right) as Stephano provide comic relief in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Spring Repertory production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Tempest runs in rotating repertory with Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Roger Mastroianni
Lost. Being stranded on a desert island has never been so fun. Spritely Festival actor Sara M. Bruner whoops it up as the spirit Ariel in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Spring Repertory production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Tempest runs in rotating repertory with Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Roger Mastroianni
Such stuff as dreams are made on. Spritely Festival actor Sara M. Bruner whoops it up as the spirit Ariel in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Spring Repertory production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Tempest runs in rotating repertory with Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Roger Mastroianni
Veteran GLTF actor Aled Davies takes center stage as Prospero as David Gregory (Ferdinand) and Laura Welsh (Miranda) watch on in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Spring Repertory production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Tempest runs in rotating repertory with Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Roger Mastroianni
Sleep. Dream. Veteran GLTF actor Aled Davies casts his spell as Prospero with Sara M. Bruner (Ariel) in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Spring Repertory production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Tempest runs in rotating repertory with Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Roger Mastroianni
The eye of the storm. A match is made as Alonso (actor Richard McWilliams center) joins the hands of Ferdinand (actor David Gregory, left) and Miranda (actor Laura Welsh, right) in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Spring Repertory production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Tempest runs in rotating repertory with Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Roger Mastroianni
A Father (Richard McWilliams as Alonso) soothes a son’s (David Gregory as Ferdinand) tempestuous heart as fellow stranded shipmates watch on in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Spring Repertory production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Tempest runs in rotating repertory with Noel Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center through April 21. Photograph by Roger Mastroianni