For the first two seasons at Hudson Stage Company, co-founders Dan Foster, Olivia Sklar and Denise Bessette might have taken the meteorological conditions as an omen.
“It seemed that every event we did was met with some weather disaster: a flood, a hurricane, several blizzards, and even a late spring hailstorm,” recalls Foster. “But being in the theater, we took them all as positive signs.”
The skies have long since cleared over Hudson Stage, which began as an informal play-reading series in the Croton Free Library and, 10 years ago, formed as a professional theater company at Clear View School in Briarcliff.
Last year, they had to turn people away from the sold-out run of Jeffrey Hatcher’s“Murderers” at the 130-seat Woodward Hall Theater at Pace University in Briarcliff. Read more of this entry »

Today is Halloween and there are treats – and a couple of tricks – on local stages.

Briarcliff’s Hudson Stage kicks off its 10th anniversary season with “Mary’s Wedding,” a two-character dream play set in Canada in World War I. It’s sweet and unabashedly sentimental, but it also requires a thinking audience to fill in the blanks. If it were candy bar, it’d be a Charleston Chew. 914-271-2811.

PMT Productions returns to its Pleasantville roots with Stephen Schwartz’s lovely little musical, “The Baker’s Wife,” about French villagers who love their bread more than they love their neighbors. Directed by Westchester theater icon George Puello, this would have to be a Twix bar, since the cookie inside has to be baked. 914-428-8446.

Pamela Moller Kareman, the artistic director for The Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls, says the venue’s first show as a professional regional not-for-profit theater — Lanford Wilson’s “Talley’s Folly” — had at least things going for it.

“It was a budgetary consideration: Two people in the cast,” she says with a laugh. “And (founder) Lee (Pope) loved the lyrical quality of the writing.”

“Talley’s Folly” also fit the mission that Moller Kareman and Pope had for the converted Croton Falls elementary school: Presenting lesser-known works of American playwrights.
“We’ve done Tennessee Williams, but we haven’t done ‘Streetcar,’” Moller Kareman says. “We look for award-winning playwrights, but we’ve also done newer writers, like Todd Susman.”

In Act 2 of “110 in the Shade,” now on stage at Antrim Playhouse in Wesley Hills, Lizzie Curry — a woman who doesn’t believe she’s a woman — sings about her dreams in an achingly lovely song.

“Simple little things
All I want are simple little things.
All I need is someone beside me to have and to hold,
Someone to love me as we grow older.
Simple little things,
Simple little dreams will do.”

If you lived in the world of Axial Theatre’s one-act evening “Inside/Out” — running through this weekend at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Pleasantville — you’d fear fatherhood, wonder if having kids was a smart idea, consider adoption, ride your bike to work, cheat on your girlfriend, long for love and might be homeless.

And your world would be funnier than the one we’re living in.

Axial, Pleasantville’s 10-year-old  laboratory for new theater, kicks off its milestone season with an evening of brisk comedies, revisiting two favorites and adding two more.

When Howard Meyer and a group of actors and writers tried to start Axial Theatre in 1998, the mix wasn’t right.

“Terrific actors, but a few too many egos,” he says.
Meyer, a baseball fan,  finds parallels on the diamond.
“It’s the difference between the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees. You can buy all the best players in baseball, but that still doesn’t win you a World Series,” he says.

Organizers in Larchmont and Mount Vernon are planting the seeds for two new theater groups.

In Larchmont, Stacie Moye and Jessica Smith — the team behind the new Studio For Musical Theater (StudioFMT) on Gilder Street — plan their second meeting Monday with people interested in forming an adult theater troupe, to be called Studio Theater Project.

Moye says a meeting last month attracted “a small but very enthusiastic turnout.”

Trained at Emerson College and The Boston Conservatory, respectively, Moye (bottom, right) and Smith (top, right) have been teaching voice at their studio in Larchmont for about a year.

The closets in Linda Eder’s North Salem home hold many gowns: gowns for special occasions and gowns for evenings out.

There are gowns for the shows the Minnesota native has been singing for decades, shows that celebrate the American Songbook.

Eder will wear one of those gowns Saturday to lend her support to the Tarrytown Music Hall at its first-ever gala fundraiser. She’ll likely sing songs from her last album, an all Judy Garland CD titled “By Myself.”

There may be some Barbra Streisand and some Broadway show tunes.

But Eder’s closet holds its share of jeans, too.

Her latest CD – the country-pop “The Other Side of Me” – is so close to the real-life Linda Eder that it could easily be titled “Be Myself.”

Linda Eder’s not in Kansas anymore.

Eder first hit it big when she was a multiple winner on “Star Search,” the TV talent competition hosted by Ed McMahon.

Soon enough, she was on Broadway, playing Lucy in “Jekyll & Hyde,” which was written by her husband, composer Frank Wildhorn. The couple divorced in 2004 and have a son, Jake.

Eder says that the breakup, and her new relationship, make turning the page musically almost inevitable.

Nearly all of the dozen songs on “The Other Side of Me” are new compositions, including one by Eder herself, titled “Waiting for the Fall.”

That song, in 4 minutes and 16 seconds, takes Eder as far from “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart” as she can get. It starts with a great guitar lick and has an edgy vibe that sounds like Bonnie Raitt had a hand in it. (She didn’t.)

The lyric begins:

“It was one of those nights

And now the silence in my room is deafening.”

Later in the song, a backup singer raps along as Eder croons above it all.

If “The Other Side of Me” represents, well, the other side of Eder, she’s not ready to close the American Songbook anytime soon.

“I don’t intend to stop the gown shows,” she says. “Even though the new album is more innately me, for 20 years I’ve been singing the other kind of music and I’ve become good at it. I still love those songs.”

Still, it might make for some confusion among her fans who would be justified to wonder which Eder is showing up.

“I call myself the real Hannah Montana,” she says, referring to the Disney character played by Miley Cyrus, “because I’m doing two totally different shows. One is the jeans show, because I get to wear jeans on stage, and the other is the gown show.”

For the record, Saturday’s gala is a gown show, one with which she’s familiar, but one that’s not really who she is.

“It’s a bit like doing theater for me,” Eder says of the gown shows, “because I always feel like I’m playing a bit of a role, the role of a diva, or that entertainer.

“She isn’t me off-stage, but I love it and I don’t want to stop doing it.”

Eder says she can’t be entirely sure if she’s ever been to Tarrytown Music Hall – a venue saved from the wrecking ball and lovingly restored by Berthold and Helen Ringeisen and The Friends of the Mozartina, and managed by Karina Ringeisen.

“I’ll know as soon as I see the dressing room,” Eder says, explaining that her pre-show routine is that of an entertainer.

“I always come in through the stage doors and I always go to the dressing room. I never see the fronts of the theaters or even the lobbies. I never see it from the hall. I just see the dressing rooms and I see out from the stage.

“But I’m happy to hear that they’ve saved it. I hate it when musical theaters get torn down,” she says.

If they were torn down, she wouldn’t have anywhere to wear her gowns.

But she’d still have her jeans.

Linda Eder

Where: Tarrytown Music Hall, 13 Main St., Tarrytown.

When: 7 p.m. Saturday

Tickets: $45, $65 and $85 for the performance; $140 for the post-performance gala reception at the Doubletree Hotel Tarrytown only; $225 premium tickets include performance and gala reception.

Call: 877-840-0457.

Web: http://tickets.tarrytownmusichall.org.

The North Rockland Drama Society will present Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” on Nov. 7 and 8 at 7:30 p.m., and Nov. 9 at 2:30 p.m. at North Rockland High School, 106 Hammond Road, Thiells.

Free Refreshments will be served for senior citizens before the Nov. 9, at 1:30PM.
Adults $7; students and seniors $5. Call 845-942-3300 ext. 4954
James Huppert, a North Rockland alum and UConn graduate who has been a set and light designer, is directing.

Actors Conservatory Theatre’s production of “Shenandoah” — at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Hall in Yonkers this weekend and next — has a lot going for it.

First and foremost, there’s Steve Taylor, who tackles the lead role of Charlie Anderson — a part created by John Cullum on Broadway — with a mix of weariness, fear and a twinkle in his eye.

Taylor’s singing voice is strong and suited to the role. He delivers each song — from the far-reaching “Meditation” to the playful “The Pickers Are Comin’ ” to the lullaby “Papa’s Gonna Make It All Right” — with a command not often seen in community-theater productions.

As much as we all might want the campaign to be over and vote already, I can’t cast my ballot for “Election Day,” the fall production of the 70-year-old Fort Hill Players.

Playwright Josh Tobiessen’s script is uneven. While trying for the madcap — with bombing eco-terrorists, a devoted campaign worker and a candidate who’ll do anything to get elected — he resorts to language that is unnecessarily coarse and a plot that is unforgivably weak.

“Murder in Green Meadows” — the title tells you that there will be a body involved in this production, but be warned: Death is only a passing thing in this Illinois subdivision. Just when you think someone’s dead and gone, they’re back again in the flesh.

At Brewster Theater Company, Doug Post’s thriller is briskly directed by Kevin Cannon and has a cast of four: Joshua Horan as Thomas Devereaux; Barbara Marks as his wife, Joan; Mallory Lidsky as neighbor Carolyn Symons; and Paul Stein as her husband, Jeff.

• Legendary actress Chita Rivera will be on hand Saturday to sign autographs and help mark Stage Left Children’s Theater’s 10th anniversary. The event is a Casino Night fundraiser at the Holiday Inn at 329 Route 303 in Orangeburg, from 8 p.m. to midnight. The evening will feature casino tables such as blackjack, craps, roulette and Texas Hold ‘em. $75. 845-365-9000 or stageleftchildrenstheater.org.
• Axial Theatre’s 10th anniversary season gets under way with “Inside/Out,” an evening of comedic one-acts, Friday through Nov. 2; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays; and 4 p.m. Sundays. $25. Tickets to Thursday preview are $15. At St. John’s Episcopal Church, 8 Sunnyside Ave., Pleasantville. 914-962-8828, Ext. 4.; www.axialtheatre.org.
• Antrim Playhouse in Wesley Hills presents “110 in the Shade,” the musical based on “The Rainmaker,” Friday through Nov. 16; $23, $21 for seniors and students. (Discounts don’t apply on Saturday nights.) Antrim Playhouse is at 15 Spook Rock Road, Wesley Hills. 845-354-9503. www.antrimplayhouse.com.

When 30 kids take to the stage at The Tarrytown Music Hall this weekend to present Stephen Schwartz’s “Children of Eden,” they’ll be telling the biblical story of creation.

But they’ll also be creating something themselves.

The four performances mark the official start of Total Teen Productions, a kids-theater program produced, directed and choreographed entirely by teens, with a cast from ages 8 to 18.

While Schwartz’s musical goes back to the Garden of Eden, Total Teen’s roots can be traced directly to Samurai Japanese Sushi & Hibachi Steak House in Croton-on-Hudson.

Heard from Keith Sunderland today that The Stepinac Drama Club will present Dale Wasserman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” Nov. 21 and 22 at 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 23 at 3 p.m.

Tickets are $15, $12 for seniors and children under 12 (although I’m not sure how appropriate this might be for kids under 12.) For details, or group rates, call 914-946-4800, ext. 243.

On a musical note, the school will announce its spring musical on Thursday. Last year’s “Singin’ in the Rain” garnered a lion’s share of High School Theater Awards nominations.