Central College theatre students and faculty will put on “A Grand Night for Singing” at 7 p.m. April 27, 28 and 29 and at 2 p.m. April 30 in the Kruidenier Theatre on campus. The show is free to all and features students Andrea Bogaard and Rylie Shettler, with the Class of 2023; Logan Fehlhafer, Bryson McGowan and Kamryn Waymire, with the Class of 2024; Silas Harris, Class of 2025; and Katie Fairchild, Grace Harvey, Keely Krambeer, Rachel Masters and Grant Morgan, with the Class of 2026.
Serving on the stage management team are students Jessica Duffy, stage manager, and Emily Shields, assistant stage manager, both in the Class of 2025.
C.D. Adamson, associate professor of theatre, will direct the production. Sean Stephenson, assistant professor of music, will direct the music, and Cynthia Prickett Berschel, a dance instructor with the Visual and Performing Arts Department, is the choreographer. Guest performers include Adamson, Anne McCullough Kelly, Central counselor, Hannah Stephenson, travel and concert manager for music, and Sean Stephenson.
According to the show’s description, “Taste and imagination, the two key ingredients for a first-rate revue, abound in this fresh take on the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon, conceived by Tony Award winner Walter Bobbie. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein may never have imagined ‘Shall We Dance?’ as a comic pas de deux for a towering beauty and her diminutive admirer, nor might they have suspected that one day a lovelorn young lad might pose the musical question, ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’ But that’s precisely the kind of invention lavished upon this new revue, with innovative musical arrangements.”