Posted June 20, 2009

New Musical Dinner Theatre Sets Sail July 17 at Copake Lake

COPAKE - Columbia County’s newest theatre group, The Taconic Stage Company, launches its inaugural production July 17 with a riotous musical celebration of middle age, “I Know I Came In Here For Something...”

The show will be presented as a dinner theatre evening at the air-conditioned Lighthouse Marina and Restaurant overlooking Copake Lake on July 17, 18, 24, 25 and 31 and August 1. The full buffet dinner with cash bar opens at 7 p.m., show at 8:30 p.m. Cost is only $30 for dinner and show.

Taconic Stage Company’s artistic director is a familiar local personality, Carl Ritchie. After three seasons as artistic director of Copake Theatre and a stint as town councilman, Ritchie took a year off to write shows and has returned with this new, non-profit theatre venture.

Ritchie specializes in small cast musicals and comedies, and his one-woman musicals, “Nine Months” and “Nine Months 2” (with music by Stephen Woodjetts) have been performed in more than a hundred theatres in Canada and the United States, and have been translated and performed in French. “Family Values,” which originally ran for four months off Broadway, has also been translated into French and had hugely successful runs in Quebec.

“I Know I Came in Here for Something...” is Ritchie’s brand new musical revue celebrating the ups and downs of middle age. Twenty-five original songs feature lyrics by Ritchie and music by Los Angeles composer Wayne Moore (who will fly here to play accompaniment) and are performed by the versatile and talented cast of Diedre Devere Bollinger, David L. Greene, Cathy Lee-Visscher and Brian Litscher. They will sing and dance in an evening of silliness, poignancy – and more silliness!

There will be general seating for the shows, family style, on a first-come basis with tables of eight; parties of eight can prepay and reserve a table. Dinner is served in the same room as the show, but if it’s a nice evening patrons are welcome to take their plates outside. The bar will be open before and after the show and during intermission, at which time dessert will be laid out.

For reservations call (518) 325-1234; visit their website at www.TaconicStage.com

Future Taconic Stage Company shows will include “Bed Among the Lentils” and “Talking, Talking Heads,” to be performed in late August and early September at St. John in the Wilderness, a gothic revival church in Copake Falls.

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