Straw Hat Players enters 52nd season with four shows
Minnesota State University Moorhead’s Straw Hat Players Summer Theatre opens its 52nd season with the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical revue Some Enchanted Evening, a PG-rated show with hits like “Climb Every Mountain,” “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” and many more. The show runs from June 2 to 5 in Hansen Theatre.
The season continues with the PG-rated musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. The musical tells story of an eclectic group of mid-pubescents who vie for the spelling championship of a lifetime. The show runs June 9 to 12 on the Gaede Stage.
The Broadway hit The Good Doctor runs four nights beginning June 16 on the Gaede Stage. The Good Doctor is a composite of Neil Simon and Anton Chekhov, using a series of stories to introduce various characters and comedic situations. The stories are whimsical, the portraits affectionate and the humor infectious.
The final show of the season is the hit musical Cats. The show runs June 23 to 27 on the Hansen Theatre stage. Cats is one of the longest-running musicals ever. Composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, it tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles. Cat’s introduced the song standard “Memory.”
The Straw Hat Players season was shortened by one show to accommodate the Gooseberry Park Players, a summer youth theatre company which vacated its former home at Concordia College. The Gooseberry Park Players are staging the musical Footloose July 15 to 19.
Hansen Theatre and the Gaede Stage are located in the Roland Dille Center for the Arts on the MSUM campus. All shows start at 7:30 p.m. except for a matinee performance of Cats on June 27 at 2 p.m., and Gooseberry’s July 19 show, which starts at 1 p.m. Signed performances for the hearing impaired are Thursdays for all Straw Hat shows.
Tickets are available for the entire Straw Hat season at a discount, for individual shows and for Gooseberry’s Footloose online at mnstate.edu/tickets, or by calling the MSUM Box Office Monday through Friday from noon to 4 p.m. at (218) 477-2271.