Town Players of Pittsfield, Inc.
P.O. Box 765, Pittsfield, MA 01201-0765
Bringing the Best of Broadway to the Berkshires
Since 1921

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BCC Boland Theater
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Colonial Theatre

1999-2000 Season

Light up the Sky

By Moss Hart

Directed by Robert Boland

Assistant Director Judy McNutt

"Mad, Sire? Ah, Yes - mad indeed, but observe how they do light up the sky."
Old Skroob in "The Idle Jeste"

LIGHT UP THE SKY : 1949 : The play is from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of You Can’t Take it With You and The Man who Came to Dinner. It is Moss Hart's chronicle of the traumas and triumphs of out-of-town openings. "LIGHT UP THE SKY" is an insider's view of the comic horrors of creating a Broadway show and was written as a tribute to his friends in the theater. Set behind the scenes on the opening night of a pre-Broadway out-of-town tryout. It offers a rare look at show business relationships and personalities stretched to the breaking point. No character is safe from Moss Hart's mockery in his wickedly comic valentine to the theater.

The play is a rollicking comedy with show business taking center stage. Set in a Boston hotel suite, Light Up the Sky contrasts glamorous onstage images with neurotic backstage life. Hart wrote lovingly of the theater in his best-selling memoir Act I, but he was not blind to the comic potential of over-the-top, narcissistic theatrical types. This backstage comedy features the grandly temperamental leading lady; her sarcastic, gin rummy playing mother; the flamboyant director; the lowbrow producer; and his ice-skating, wisecracking wife. Contrast these with the sensitive young playwright, toss in a convention of drunken rowdies, and "magic time" becomes "manic time" at the Ritz Carlton.

The play takes place in the hotel room of Miss Livingston prior to the opening of a new play and follows a truck-driver-turned-playwright watching his first play being produced in Boston. Upon opening of the expermental work, the opening night seems to go awry and the producer, cast, etc, believe it is a flop and turn against themselves, the producer and the author. However, the reviews are favorable and the tables are turned as the the author turns the tables on them at the last minute.

The 1949 play shows a broad reflection of the playwright's previous two decades during New York's theatre heyday. "Light Up the Sky" is, in the playwright's words, a "simple story abut show people who love each other, get into trouble, detest each other and then find out they need each other."

This production will use the Main Stage Theater Seating Layout.