Live Arts Theater’s Voyages Season 2024-2025 soars into summer with a teen show double-header: the musical “Young Frankenstein” and William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Coriolanus.”
“Young Frankenstein,” book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan, music and lyrics by Mel Brooks, is directed by Ti Ames, with music direction by Abby Smith and choreography by Liberty DeLeon, and will have seven performances. “Coriolanus,” directed by Daniel Kunkel, will have five performances.
“The Broadway Musical at its dizziest, glitziest and funniest! … divine silliness and a touch of genius,” New York Post said of “Young Frankenstein.”
Both productions are sponsored by Lauren Ryan and Silas Byrne.
“‘Coriolanus’ takes us into the mind of a warrior. He is an antihero and hero merged into one,” Ashland News.
The two productions will run in rotating repertory in the Gibson Theater, July 10 through July 26, 2025. Tickets are $20 per adult and $16 per student and senior citizens, and are available through the Box Office at [email protected], by phone at 434-977-4177 x123, or online. A special double-show ticket package is available.
Live Arts will host three special events for the two shows: opening night reception following the “Coriolanus” performance on Friday, July 11, and post-show audience talk-backs on Thursday, July 24 (“Young Frankenstein“) and Friday, July 25 (“Coriolanus“). Audiences are welcome to enjoy beverages and concessions one hour prior to the performance and at intermission.
“The Live Arts Education Team is very excited to be tackling two difficult but rewarding shows with the same cast and production team. Finding the ways these stories interact and weave between and around each other is immensely rewarding. This promises to be a fresh and at times unexpected look at two classic works of theatre and how the world we live in affects the stories we tell,” Live Arts Education Director Daniel Kunkel said.
Mel Brooks, a well-known director, actor, writer, songwriter and filmmaker with a long, distinguished career spanning over 70 years, has written for television and Broadway, recorded award-winning comedy albums, created television series, and wrote, directed and often acted in numerous films (including “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein,” “Silent Movie,” “Spaceballs” and “Robin Hood: Men in Tights“). He received three 2001 Tony Awards (Best Score, Best Book of a Musical, Best Musical) and two Grammy Awards (Best Musical Show Album and Best Long Form Music Video) when “The Producers” was on Broadway. He has also won other Grammy Awards, Academy Awards and Emmy Awards (he is one of very few entertainers to win the EGOT).
Thomas Meehan, author of the book “Young Frankenstein,” is an award-winning Broadway writer, including musicals he has written books for such as “The Producers,” “Hairspray,” “Annie,” “Rocky,” “Elf: the Musical,” “Cry-Baby,” “Chaplin,” “Bombay Dreams,” “I Remember Mama,” “Ain’t Broadway Grand” and “Annie Warbucks.” He was a long-time contributor of humor to The New Yorker, an Emmy-Award winning writer of television comedy and a collaborator on a number of screenplays.
William Shakespeare was a renowned English poet, playwright and actor born in 1564, who died in 1616. He was a prolific writer during the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages of British theatre. His more than 37 plays, divided into Comedies, Histories, Tragedies and Romances, are perhaps his most enduring legacy, but his poems also remain popular.
Live Arts Theater is at 123 E. Water Street, Charlottesville.
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Rebecca Barnabi
