A slew of classic characters from the pens of Shakespeare, Coward and Wilson and more will tread the boards of the Red Bank stage this season. 

By TOM CHESEK

“I feel like I’m having a dream,” the playwright and performance artist Lisa Kron said as she faced a capacity crowd at Two River Theater Monday night.

“In high school, we, the theater people, were like the outcasts,” she said. “This is the pep rally we never had.”

The occasion for the spirited assembly was the annual new-season announcement  by Two River Theater Company — one of the most highly anticipated such events in New Jersey stage circles, and one presided over by John Dias, now in his second season as TRTC’s artistic director.

As introduced by the nationally renowned producer and some celebrated associates, the 2012-2013 schedule builds upon the successful template established in the current 2011-2012 season — a season that climaxes with the production of Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s My Wonderful Day, going up in previews on May 15.

Utilizing both the mainstage Rechnitz auditorium and the “black box” Marion Huber space at TRTC’s branded Bridge Avenue arts center, the new slate of eight shows mixes classics of the English language with new American voices; intimate solos with exquisite ensembles, and new faces with a whole lot of returning favorites — with words from the likes of Noel Coward, August Wilson and a guy by the name of Shakespeare.

Veterans of Broadway and the Two River Theater, Michael Cumpsty and Chuck Cooper return to the Red Bank stage in 2013.

Joining Dias on stage were a couple of people new to Two River — Kron (whose Broadway production Well was developed with Dias and director Leigh Silverman), and composer-bandleader Ethan Lipton — as well as a pair of Tony-lauded talents who should be familiar not just to Broadway habitues, but to regular observers of the Red Bank scene.

Presently appearing in End of the Rainbow on Broadway (a show for which he’s received a Tony nomination as Best Featured Actor), Michael Cumpsty previewed his involvement with next year’s Present Laughter as a project that “will bring me back to Red Bank, which is where I want to be. I fell in love with this theater, and with the family at the theater.”

An Obie winner for Hamlet and, with Dias, a resident of Middletown, Cumpsty (who starred for TRTC in 2011′s Much Ado About Nothing, and shared the stage with Alec Baldwin for a fundraiser last November) got laughs for suggesting that his role in the Coward comedy — “an aging matinee idol, who throws everyone around him into a vortex of neurosis” — was brought to him as being “kind of like (my) life.”

Making a big splash with Monday night’s audience was Chuck Cooper, the actor and singer who starred this year in both the “chamber musical” In This House and the Red Bank run of August Wilson’s Jitney. The winner of the 1997 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical (as Memphis, in The Life) will be portraying a different character by the name of Memphis, when he reunites with noted director Ruben Santiago-Hudson and the words of August Wilson for Two Trains Running. Referring to the late African American playwright as “the American Bard” — and calling up the concept of the “blood memory” that unites people of diverse backgrounds — the actor observed that “just like Shakespeare, it takes about a minute to get Wilson’s poetry. You lean into it and you get it. Come to this play and you will remember.”

A high point of the evening was Cooper’s performance of a song from next season’s “family show” presentation, A Wind in the Willows Christmas. The “Americanized” adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s beloved animal characters was composed by the In This House songwriting partnership of Mike Reid and Sarah Schlesinger, although  there are, unfortunately, no plans to suit up Cooper as Mr. Toad when the show makes its bow in December.

The 2012-2013 season, for which subscriptions will soon be made available, is as follows:

TOP DOG/ UNDERDOG (September 8-30, 2012). In 2002, Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for this tale of two brothers, a game of Three Card Monte, and the shared past that can’t be escaped. On the tenth anniversary of this theatrical milestone, Dias and TRTC managing director Michael Hurst return to the play that they helped develop in its premiere at NYC’s Public Theater, with the playwright herself as director.

NO PLACE TO GO (October 6 – November 4, 2012). The quirky, retro-rocketing music of Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra is front and center for this “irreverent, deeply compassionate musical ode to America’s work force,” a lament for a longtime employee whose company has announced that it’s moving to another planet. TRTC Associate Artist Leigh Silverman (who directed Lisa Kron in Well) takes the helm for this premiere inside the Marion Huber Theater.

HENRY V (October 20 – November 11, 2012). William Shakespeare’s supercharged history of a gung-ho young king and the costs of living in a perpetual state of war — the play that gave us the rousing exhortation “Once more unto the breach” — is staged by Michael Sexton of The Shakespeare Society, with a cast featuring “some of New York’s most accomplished young Shakespearean actors.”

A WIND IN THE WILLOWS CHRISTMAS (December 8-30, 2012). In TRTC’s annual holiday presentation for family audiences, Grammy winning Nashville songsmith and recording artist (plus ex-NFL defensive tackle) Mike Reid reteams with Sarah Schlesinger for a new take on the adventures of Mr. Toad, Mr. Badger, Mole and company, while director Amanda Dehnert makes a long-awaited Red Bank debut.

PRESENT LAUGHTER (February 16 – March 10, 2013). Two River Theater Company visits the works of Noel Coward for the third time (following Blithe Spirit and Private Lives) with this witty and sophisticated “valentine to the theater,” in which Cumpsty stars as the debonair leading man Gary Essendine. A director will be announced later this year.

THE ELECTRIC BABY (April 6 – May 5, 2013). For their next world premiere project inside the Marion Huber space, the TRTC team welcomes playwright Stephanie Zadravec for this adult drama about the way we form families — a story in which “a group of lost souls are brought together by accident, and form unlikely connections that will change all of their lives.” May Adrales (In This House) directs.

2.5 MINUTE RIDE (April 20 – May 12, 2013). Performing this monologue piece for the first time in about ten years, author and storyteller Lisa Kron spins a moving and funny autobiographical story that centers on her relationship with her Holocaust survivor father — an Obie-nominated whirlwind tour that careens from concentration camp to amusement park rollercoaster ride. Mark Brokaw (Broadway’s The Lyons) directs.

August Wilson’s TWO TRAINS RUNNING (June 1-23, 2013). Continuing their exploration of Wilson’s epic “Pittsburgh Cycle” that began with this season’s Jitney (and bringing back Chuck Cooper as well as Tony winning actor, director and “first generation Wilsonian” Ruben Santiago-Hudson), TRTC advances into Summer’s heat with this ensemble drama set in the riot-scarred urban landscape of the 1960s; a crucial component of a project that Dias calls “one of the greatest chronicles of a people and a time…one of the greatest works of art ever.”

Take it here for individual tickets to the upcoming production of My Wonderful Day, as well as an “Intimate Evening With…” series of star-quality music concerts at Two River Theater. Check in for updates on other summertime events at Bridge Ave, including the second annual Crossing Borders festival, Joe Muccioli’s Summer Jazz Series and the BOLERO Red Bank dance project — about all of which more to come in the paperless pages of redbankgreen.

Rehearsing for this week’s Spring Dance Concerts at Red Bank Regional, VPA dance majors include (front row, left to right) Phoenicia Butler, Jessica Adderly, Dillion Jackson, plus (back row, left to right) Kendall Van Winkle, Bella Caputi and  Samantha Lore. 

When the Visual and Performing Arts program at Red Bank Regional High School puts on a show, it’s like the Big Game.

Beginning Thursday night and carrying over into the middle of the coming week, the students of the VPA –majors in dance, music and visual arts from all over the Shore area — will take center stage in a series of showcase events, starting with a pair of Spring Dance Concert performances and continuing with the first fully staged opera production in the school’s history.

Katherine Robinson (Shrewsbury) looks on as Evangeline Athanasiou (Red Bank) confronts Patrick Martini (Union Beach) in DIDO AND AENEAS, one of two full one-act operas to be presented next week at Red Bank Regional. (Click to enlarge)

Some 42 dance majors — including six seniors performing together for the last time — take to the boards of the RBR Theatre this Thursday at 7 pm, and again on Saturday at 2 pm, for a recital that combines the work of special guest choreographers with the choreography of the student dancers themselves.

Offering up 30 numbers that range from jazz to hip hop and other contemporary styles, the Spring Dance Concert program features the input of  Say Dance Collective founder Gabrielle Barnett, as well as several VPA dance major alumni (Jamie Baptist, Gwen Baum, Jessica Berube, Kali Drake, Anthony Tiedeman) who’ve gone on to pursue dance and dance education careers.

Berube, who’s served as a student teacher during the 2011-2012 school year at RBR, contributed an original piece entitled Off I Go, which will be realized onstage by the six senior dancers — among them Red Bank’s Phoenicia Butler, who choreographed three of the segments  in the spring show (and who will be studying toward a career in dance education at the University of North Carolina).

Also performing in Off I Go will be three students from Little Silver — Kristin Balve, Dillon Jackson and Kendall Van Winkle — as well as Alexis Hines (Union Beach) and Colleen Strazdas (Neptune City).

RBR faculty member Kristopher Zook says he was looking for “something new” to stretch the abilities of his vocal students — and on the evenings of May 1 and 2, the RBR stage offers something unique to local audiences: a night at the opera.

Featured are a pair of works which, although they were written hundreds of years apart from each other, have a couple of things in common. Both are one-acts of roughly an hour in length, and both are in English.

Written in 1946, The Medium by Gian Carlo Menotti (best known for Amahl and the Night Visitors) will be followed by Dido and Aeneas, a “tragic love story” (written in 1689 by Henry Purcell) that has the distinction of being the first opera composed in the English language. The operas will be presented at 7 pm on Tuesday, May 1, and again at 7 pm on Wednesday, May 2.

Zook, who will be directing both operas, called the production “an ambitious project for high school singers, and for some the first opera they have ever attempted, but our talented students are up to the task.”

Starring as Dido is Evangeline Athanasiou of Red Bank, who as winner of the New Jersey Governor School Opera honor is ranked as the top operatic vocal artist in Garden State high schools. Athanasiou, who plans to continue her vocal studies at the Boston Conservatory of Music, will share the stage with Patrick Martini of Union Beach as Aeneas. Shurmila Dhar (Little Silver) and Katharine Robinson (Shrewsbury) are also in the cast for Wednesday’s performance.

Appearing in The Medium on Tuesday are Gabriella Concepcion (Hazlet), Christopher Dubrow (Shrewsbury), Vincent Martini (Union Beach), Erin Murphy (Millstone), Lauren Staub (Avon) — and Little Silver’s Madelyn Monaghan, currently starring as Dorothy in the Phoenix Productions staging of The Wizard of Oz.

Tickets for either performance of A Night at the Opera, or either of the Spring Dance Concerts, are priced at $10 for adults ($5 for students or senior citizens) and may be purchased at the door, or reserved in advance by calling (732) 842-8000, ext. 227.

The vocal students will return to the RBR Theatre stage on Thursday, May 24 for a one-time choral concert entitled Comedy and Tragedy — a program that juxtaposes John Rutter’s sober “Requiem” with the comic cantata “Knock Knock” by the enigmatic “P.D.Q. Bach” (as channeled by the madly musical Professor Peter Schickele).

Models showed off bridal gowns at Sassy Chic Boutique, above, while a passerby did a doubletake at the sight of human mannequin Stephanie Rogers at Barbizon Models during the fourth Wedding Walk in Red Bank Saturday.

Nancy Adams, executive director of event sponsor Red Bank RiverCenter, said the walk attracted about 30 percent more registrants than the March, 2011 edition, with some 600 shoppers thronging the streets in search of dresses, hair styling, DJs, photographers and more wedding-related goods and services. (Click to enlarge)

Santa and team prep for a grand entrance at Red Bank Catholic’s Holiday Dance Spectacular, going up tonight and tomorrow at the school’s Broad Street Auditorium.

While throngs of shoppers march in step to the One-Day Sales and Midnight Madness events, terpischorean teens from two local high schools are getting ready to strut their stuff in the weekends leading up to the winter break.

Tonight and tomorrow night, the Dance Department at Red Bank Catholic High School rings in the Yuletide season with “high energy, high kickin’ numbers in the style of the world famous Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular” — during a Holiday Dance Spectacular that also promises a Living Nativity and a guest appearance from Santa, conducting “a journey from the streets of New York to the North Pole.”

Tickets for either of the shows (Friday 7pm, Saturday 8pm) are priced at $10 and are available from the RBC bookstore in advance or at the door. Call (732)747-1774 for more info and be sure to bring a new unwrapped toy for this year’s Toys for Tots collection.

Next Saturday, December 17, it’s Red Bank Regional‘s turn to make like the Rockettes, as the dance students of the Visual and Performing Arts Academy bring their annual Holiday Dance Concert to the school stage.

Dancers from the Performing Arts program at Red Bank Regional High School rehearse for the upcoming Holiday Dance Concert, going up Saturday, December 17.

Presented in two acts — the first with traditional holiday numbers, the second featuring an eclectic mix of jazz, ballet, modern, lyrical and contemporary (including hip hop) styles — the RBR event boasts a program of numbers choreographed by students and alumni, including returning guest artists Barbara Vari and Jessica Smith.

Scheduled segments include Duffy’s “Syrup and Honey” (choreographed by senior Kendall Van Winkle of Little Silver), Britney Spear’s version of “My Only Wish is You” (choreographed by junior Jessica Adderly of Union Beach), as well as three numbers, including “XR2″ by MIA, choreographed by senior Dillon Jackson of Little Silver.

Phoenicia Butler of Red Bank is also directing the dancers for three of the concert’s numbers, among them the Christina Aguilera song “Born to You” and a Hip Hop remix to the Gene Kelly’s signature “Singing in the Rain.” The senior’s choreography of the holiday finale features all 45 RBR dancers in costume and in motion to such seasonal songs as “When Christmas Comes to Town,” “Hot Chocolate” (from the animated film Polar Express), “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” “It’s a Marshmallow World” and the Rockette-style showstopper “I want to be a Rockette.”

Tickets for the 7pm program ($10 dollars adults; $5 students and seniors) are available at the door or by calling (732) 842-8000, extension 364.

The Downtown in Red Bank was bumping and grinding Wednesday night as the Nick Clemons Band, led by the son of late E-Street Band saxman Clarence Clemons shared the stage and runway with the Daisy Dukes-wearing Bar-top Bandits.

Photographer Peter Lindner was there for redbankgreen.

(P.S. There’s a bit of a discussion underway on our Facebook page on whether events and pix like these are part of a societal ill that needs addressing. Pop on over if you’d like to weigh in.)

Intro classes ($10) start at 6:30 p.m., followed by intermediate and advanced classes at 7:30. (Photos by Stacie Fanelli. Click to enlarge)

Police identified Sean Montgomery, left, of Little Silver and Shrewsbury, as the instigator of  the June 19 beating at a party on Spring Street that left Julliard dance scholar Anthony Tiedeman with a broken jaw that required surgery.

Montgomery, 18, turned himself in last week after police issued a complaint charging him with aggravated assault, said Captain Darren McConnell.

Another classmate, Perry Campanella, whose town of residence McConnell did not have immediately available, and Jahmer Bunch, of Neptune, are expected to appear for arraignment in borough court with Montgomery on Thursday. They, too, are charged with aggravated assault. Each is 18 or 19 years old, McConnell said.

Tiedeman, Montgomery and Campanella were members of the class of 2011, which graduated just two days prior to the party at which McConnell said Tiedeman was attacked.

A longstanding dispute over a girl led to the attack, McConnell said.

“It sounds like it was just kind of a high school beef,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be anything more to it than that.”

Tiedeman, he said, was attacked by the trio without provocation.

“Sean Montgomery seems to be the one who had the problem with him,” McConnell said. “The other two were just sort of there as friends of his.”

Police, summoned to the scene at about 10:30 p.m. that Sunday night, found Tiedeman bleeding and bruised. He was briefly hospitalized for surgery on his jaw, McConnell said.

McConnell said Tiedeman was able to immediately identify his assailants to police, but the process of finding other potential witnesses among the “dozens” of party attendees and interviewing them caused a delay in issuing charges.

Police explored the possibility of a bias attack, but ruled it out because “Tiedeman is not a member of any protected group that the bias statute applies to, and the attack appears to have been motivated by just a general dislike” of the victim.

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

A recent Red Bank Regional graduate who was accepted to Julliard‘s prestigious dance program was badly injured in an assault Sunday night, Red Bank police said.

Police are still pursuing the assailants who beat up Anthony Tiedeman, right, and sent him to the hospital with a broken jaw and eye, mouth and nose injuries, said Captain Darren McConnell.

The assault occurred after a party on Spring Street Sunday. RBR students graduated Friday, and McConnell said the party had “something to do with kids,” but wasn’t sure if it was a graduation party.

“I don’t know if it was all RBR kids, but primarily RBR kids,” involved in the beating, he said.

Police responded to a report of a large party outside a home on Spring Street, and when they arrived, “located a party breaking up,” McConnell said. Police then saw Tiedeman, who “had some facial injuries from a physical assault,” McConnell said, reading from the police report.

Tiedeman, 18, whose family lives on Spring Street, was taken to Riverview Medical Center for his injuries.

As part of the department’s investigation, which may yield charges against suspects, McConnell said police are treating the incident as a possible bias crime.

Under state statute, assaults meant to intimidate a victim because of his race, color, religion, gender, handicap, sexual orientation or ethnicity are subject to heavier penalties than a other assaults.

In April, redbankgreen reported on Tiedeman being accepted to Julliard after being selected from among 560 applicants.

The chances were about as good as getting struck by lightning, but a Red Bank Regional senior has made his way to one of the country’s most prestigious performing arts schools.

Anthony Tiedeman, right, has been accepted to Julliard, a highly sought-after school that has less than a five-percent acceptance rate.

After a three-round audition process, the school selected Tiedeman and 25 others from a group of 560 applicants, a release from RBR said.

“I feel this is the perfect school for me and presents the perfect challenge,” the dance major said in the release.

Tiedeman, of Red Bank, has had plenty of practice to get to this point.

A dancer since he was eight, Tiedeman spends 90 minutes a day in dance class at RBR. But that’s only a warm-up. He drives up to Sayreville to one of the state’s top studios, The Dance Stop, to practice another four to five hours after school.

He aspires to be a professional dancer with a traveling troupe, he said, but wouldn’t mind returning to Red Bank to be a guest choreographer at the high school.

“No doubt his teachers and classmates will be following his star,” the release said.

We’ve sprung ahead, clock-wise, and have arrived at the middle of March with the feeling that the roar of the late-winter lion will soon enough succumb to the bleating of the lamb.

While it’s still technically not springtime just yet, a typically busy gust of activity at the Count Basie Theatre sounds the keynote for the coming months — suggesting that we’ve all made it over the wacky-weather hump. Or is it Humperdinck?

Whatever you do, never suggest that his godzillions of female fans are anywhere near “over” the British-born singer who’s been seducing ‘em in song since the Fab Four were still touring. When the eternal King of Romance often known “simply” as Engelbert returns to Red Bank on the heels of his 40th Anniversary Tour, he’ll be effectively extending Valentine’s Day well into the season when many of us give up Russell Stover assortments and Pink Champale for Lent — with tickets for tonight’s Humper-palooza available here — and much more Basie-based excitement right around the corner.

Engelbert Humperdinck, Lily Tomlin and Todd Rundgren are among the diverse attractions pulling their buses up to the stage door of the Count’s crib, during the lambier days and nights of March.

FRIDAY: David Bromberg. In an interview that appeared here on redbankgreen during one of his recent jaunts to Red Bank, Grammy-lauded multi-instrumentalist and musicologist David Bromberg explained the appeal of making the Basie his homebase for an annual Monmouth County concert by saying, “I do have a lot of fans on the Jersey Shore, and we do a different show every time. No set lists — it’s better that way.”

When Bromberg brings his 12-piece Big Band to the Count’s crib on Friday night, he’ll be performing his “usual” unpredictable mix of originals, bull-in-a-used-record-shop covertunes (Bob Wills to Bob Dylan to Bo Diddley to Dave Dudley), and flights of fancy that may well land upon “a bluegrass tribute to Ethel Merman.” These shows tend to gather their own fanatical crowd of genre-hopping musical gourmets; Friday’s 8pm set is another promising party of the sort that comes but once a year, and you’ve got a shot at it right about here.

SATURDAY: New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. It may still be the season of St. Pat’s here on the greater ‘green, but when conductor Thomas Wilkins and the NJ Symphony organization return once more to Red Bank, they’ll be channeling not the luck of the Irish but “the soul of Iberia,” in a program of passionate classics presented under the banner The Best of Spanish Flair. Guest soloist Oren Fader — an eclectic (and sometimes even electric) guitar master in both classical and contemporary realms — joins the orchestra for selections from Bizet’s “Carmen” and a particular specialty, the “Concierto Aranjuez” by 20th century composer Joaquín Rodrigo. Tickets for Saturday’s 8pm performance range from $17 to $55 and are available not from the Basie box office, but directly from NJSO.

SUNDAY: Monmouth Symphony Orchestra. Once or maybe twice a season, veteran MSO conductor Roy Gussman steps away from the podium for a program featuring the baton-wielding prowess of assistant maestro Lucian Rinando. The expert flautist stands before the assembled players of the homegrown musical organization this Sunday afternoon, as the orchestra welcomes guest soloist Samuel Magill on cello for The Soul of Hungary, an event that showcases two works by Ernst von Dohnányi. The Austrian master Franz Joseph Haydn is also represented on the 3pm program, with a pre-concert talk slotted for 2:15pm. Tickets ($35) available here.

MARCH 26-27: Company of Dance Arts presents THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ. The students of CODA — the same Terpsichoreal talent pool that’s made Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker a Red Bank tradition every December — return to the Basie boards for a pair of 3p performances of an original ballet adapted (with choreography by the Basie’s director of education Yvonne Lamb Scudiery) from the familiar L. Frank Baum tale and its Hollywood helpers. It’s preceded by a school show on Friday, March 25; tickets to the weekend matinees ($15-$35) can be found here.