Buffalo Theater: Celebration launches plays downtown and beyond

By Mike Desmond
(Photo above by Mike Desmond)

For some people, some plays are too old and they aren’t interested.

But a high point of this year’s raucous opening of the theater season, Curtain Up! 2025, is a recent play about old-time events.

That’s Lauren Gunderson’s “The Book of Will,” a joint production of the half-century old Shakespeare in Delaware Park and Road Less Traveled Productions.

It’s the story of how colleagues of Shakespeare in the King’s Men theater company prepared copies of the Bard’s scripts for the First Folio.

That’s the accepted text of most of Shakespeare’s plays and they were the men who went on stage and acted them out and knew the words.

Many other playwrights have seen their words disappear into the mists of time, in the absence of a similar record.

Lisa Ludwig is executive director of Shakespeare in the park, a co-president of the Theatre District Association and a cast member for the RLTP production.

She says the production is a bit of theatrical serendipity.

“Scott Behrend, who’s the executive director of Road Less, approached us almost two years ago, a year and a half ago, and asked if we’d be interested in co-producing the show. And, we don’t usually do things off season,” she said.

“But, being that it was our 50^th anniversary this year, we said, if we ever were going to do a co-production, this was the show, obviously, because it’s about Shakespeare and the First Folio, and to do it for Curtain Up! In our 50^th season, seems like the perfect collaboration.”

Not far away is a play, already open, about a playwright from a time between Shakespeare and now, in Liz Duffy Adams’ “Or,” an entertaining and funny modern Restoration comedy about playwright Aphra Behn, King Charles II and Nell Gwynne, another of the king’s fertile mistresses.

That’s in the Andrews Theatre of the Irish Classical Theatre Company.

That’s a company who lost one of its founders, Vincent O’Neill, one of the two elders of the theater community who died earlier this year.

The other was Saul Elkin, founder of Shakespeare in Delaware Park.

They are commemorated in an area of plaques in front of Shea’s 710 Theatre.

That theater just kicked off the season after a $5 million renovation and re-imagining.

It’s housing a splashy, frothy production of “Dreamgirls,” which is drawing audiences to this look at performers undermined by the men who control them.

The show is raucous, colorful and fun, showing off what the new 710 can do with better facilities for customers and a two-story bar looking out over Main Street.

Also looking out over Main Street is Michael Greco.

He’s owner and chef of the Bijou Grille, directly across Main from Shea’s, and he can see crowds going into the landmark.

“It’s wonderful when Shea’s has a show, I mean, it makes the street live, come alive. Basically, I’ve been doing this for almost 35 years now. This will be my 34^th or 35^th Curtain Up!

“Every year, it’s just excitement. You know, you have the summer ending and it’s like it’s the start of this nice fall and it’s a great season starter.”

Greco sees the revived 710 and promises from Shea’s President and CEO Brian Higgins about how many more nights will have the lights lit and the customers coming.

There could be some new people also.

After “Dreamgirls,” MusicalFare will be taking over 710 as the company’s new home, pushed out of Amherst by political machinations.

Kramer says he’s having a lot of success in holding onto those Amherst customers and is getting interest from the Southtowns, now much closer.

He’s working with the customers to make sure they know about parking spaces and restaurants and Higgins says Shea’s is working on making the Theatre District more user-friendly.

In the shadow of Shea’s is the Alleyway Theatre, opening this season with “The Cottage,” a funny look at life and love and cheating among the rich in London and its surrounding area a century ago.

Chris Handley is executive artistic director and a past president of the Theatre District Association.

Handley says the opening show was a conscious choice: “Let’s have some fun rather than a three-hour tragedy.”

He wants to fill the house with newcomers who want to know: What’s next?

That might be a more serious show.

Handley says that’s somewhat the purpose of Curtain Up!

“What it does is bring thousands of people Downtown to see a show and to see the neighborhood and what’s happening and just to have fun in the street.”

Theater patrons will also be able to see “The Outsiders” on the Shea’s Mainstage, the start of a national tour for the classic look across the class lines from the S.E. Hinton novel.

Once the first shows finish, new shows will move in, like Second Generation Theatre firing up the Shea’s Smith Theatre with “Urinetown.”

Executive Director Kristen Bentley says audiences are returning, which has been a long process since the pandemic and they want something different.

“People want to see things that are fun and funny and shorter,” she said.

Curtain Up! isn’t just occurring Downtown.

Ujima is showing off “Godspell” in its Lorna C. Hill Theatre on the West Side, a musical look at the last weeks of Christ’s life, as told in the Biblical book of Matthew.

It’s filled with Christian values told from the musical stage.

Ujima Artistic Director Curtis Lovell, who plays Judas in the show, says it was important for this to be the opening show of the season:

“Because we wanted to do a show that, in a different way, embodied the thing that we are always trying to give our community, which is reminding them that there is a place for community and there is a place for authenticity and there’s a place that is fair for all of us.”

Not far from Ujima, the D’Youville Kavinoky Theater is presenting Marivaux’ three-century old “The Game of Love and Chance,” a comedy about a couple who have never met each other but are to be married.

Each decides to pose as a servant to better know the other and it goes on from there.

You may have seen a version of this two years ago at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

In the Compass Center for the Performing Arts in the Elmwood Village, once the TheatreLoft home of Ujima, Buffalo United Artists has a comedy about camping, with the requisite nutty park ranger and a hungry bear.

Co-artistic Director Rick Lattimer says Veronica Tjioe’s “The Last Croissant” is more than just a camping comedy, with its magical realism and sexual exploration, as the characters try to work out their lives and the bear looks for that croissant.

It also has one character in a tent in an overcrowded campsite because of a giant wildfire surrounding her home.

Curtain Up! is covering a lot of ground in time and space, while leaving time for that traditionally rowdy after-party after the theater curtains come down.