Philip Lynch Theatre

High School Musical
July 18-20 & July 23-27

“The show is unstoppable.”
– New York Times

Disney Channel’s smash hit, High School Musical, comes to life on the PLT stage! This contemporary musical is about a popular high school basketball star, Troy, and a shy, academically gifted newcomer, Gabriella, who discover they share a secret passion for singing.

When they sign up together to audition for the lead roles in the school musical, it threatens East High’s social order and sends their peers into an uproar. However by defying expectations and taking a chance on their dreams, Troy and Gabriella inspire other students to go public with some surprising hidden talents of their own.

The best-selling soundtrack album of 2006, Disney’s “High School Musical: is an Emmy Award-winning Disney Channel Original Movie. The stage version features new songs such as “Cellular Fusion” and the well-known hits, “Breaking Free,” “We’re All In This Together,” “Get’cha Head in the Game,” and “Start of Something New.”

Sylvia
Sept. 26-28 & Oct. 2-5

“… one of the most involving, beautiful, funny, touching and profound plays…”
– NY Daily News

A modern romantic comedy about a marriage and a dog. Greg and Kate have moved to Manhattan after twenty-two years of child –rearing in the suburbs. Greg’s career as a financial trader is winding down, while Kat’s career, as a public-school English teacher, is beginning to offer her more opportunities. Greg brings home a dog he found in the park-or that has found him-bearing only the name “Sylvia” on her name tag.

Played by an actor, Sylvia is a street-smart mixture of Lab and Poodle, and becomes a major bone of contention between husband and wife. Man’s best friend offers Greg an escape from the frustrations of his job and the unknowns of middle age. The marriage is put in serious jeopardy until, after a series of hilarious and touching complications, Greg and Kate learn to compromise, and Sylvia becomes a valued part of their lives.

Metamorphoses
Nov. 14-16 & Nov. 20-23

“Funny one moment, achingly sorrowful the next, Metamorphoses somehow manages both to lift you out of the moment you’re living in and speak to it with piercing directness.”
– Wall Street Journal

Greek myths, which were told before Ovid recorded them during the reign of Ceasar, come to life in Mary Zimmerman’s fresh, beautiful and relevant Metamorphoses. A father’s greed changes a girl into a golden statue, a boy’s self-obsession transposes his humanity into a blooming narcissus, a son tells his father how the other kids don’t believe he is the son of the Sun. To prove it, he wants to drive Daddy’s car, just once.

Set in and around a large pool of water, the play juxtaposes the ancient and the contemporary in both language and image. The play brings Ovid’s tales to stunning visual life, and in 2002 The New York Times called the play the “theater event of the year.”

Doubt
Feb. 13-15 & Feb. 19-22

“Doubt is a lean, potent drama…passionate, exquisite, important and engrossing.”
– New York Newsday

This is the one play that anyone who cares about drama should see. Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award, the play is set in 1964 but could not be timelier. In ninety fast-moving minutes, the play unfolds in a series of scenes punctuated by two sermons delivered by the young Father Flynn to his congregation on the subjects of doubt and gossip. Father Flynn tends to personalize everything which is exactly what annoys Sister Aloysius, the righteous nun who is certain that Father Flynn represents a danger to the boys at the junior high school which she rules with an iron fist. She shares her opinions with Sister James, the young teacher of still uncrushed ideals and enthusiasm.

Doubt addresses issues of great meaning to many: faith, truthfulness, and the determination to do what’s right at any cost. It’s not an open and shut case of being beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Hollywood Arms
April 17-19 & April 23-26

“… pure theatre and pure entertainment…”
– Talkin’ Broadway

Carol Burnett co-wrote the play with her late daughter, Carrie Hamilton which is based on Burnett’s 1986 memoir, “One More Time.”” Set in California in 1941 and 1951, Hollywood Arms is the funny and moving story of three generations of women living on welfare in a one-room apartment, one block north of Hollywood Boulevard.

The cast of characters include a tough, funny, yet tender pill-popping Christian Scientist grandmother; a beautiful wide-eyed and distant mother who is struggling to be a writer, only to drown her ambitions in a bottle; a loving but absent and alcoholic father; and a young girl whose only escape is up on the roof of their rundown apartment house where she creates her own magical world at the foot of the Hollywood Hills. It is a story about shattered hopes and realized dreams.