Craig Lynch, left, BJ Cleveland and the whole Uptown Players crew are ready to get back in action with live theater when Uptown presents When Pigs Fly, beginning July 9. (Photo by Rich Lopez)
Uptown Players returns to the stage with its first show ever
RICH LOPEZ | Contributing Writer
richlopezwrites@gmail.com
Last year just simply made math hard — or maybe that’s semantics. Either way, this year should mark Uptown Players’ 20th season. But with the coronavirus shutting down everything, the company finds itself having to make up for lost time.
“We were planning on doing this show for our 20th season, which would be this year. But it’s still technically our 19th,” Craig Lynch, Uptown’s director of marketing and producer, said of the upcoming show, When Pigs Fly.
Shows that were planned for its last season — such as Head Over Heels and Six Degrees of Separation — were canceled. Lynch said the former is a huge show, and with the pandemic environment today, the company wasn’t comfortable with staging such an affair.
So Lynch, BJ Cleveland and the Uptown Players board and team opted to go with one idea intended for the proper 20th season. And it’s an idea that speaks volumes.
“It was our intention to bring When Pigs Fly back sometime, and we just lucked out,” Lynch said. “It’s the perfect show to come back to.”
The show opens July 9 at the Kalita Humphreys Theater.
The Mark Waldrop/Howard Crabtree musical revue was the first show Uptown Players did back in 2001. But, Lynch noted, “Lots of people didn’t see our first show.”
Lynch was part of the cast back then, as was Cleveland, who is now directing the show. For Cleveland, the story of the show is quite pertinent to Uptown Players’ origins.
“I was thinking about this, and Uptown Players is not unlike When Pigs Fly because it’s pretty much ‘two gay boys find some costumes and put on a show,’” he said. “It’s got a little of that same history, and that’s what makes this show special.”
Uptown Players returns to the stage for live, in-person person performances on July 9 barring any last-minute CDC or Actors Equity pandemic guideline changes. But the stars seem aligned for this show to go on.
After a successful run in the 1990s, Pigs went dormant. It was on track for an off-Broadway revival in 2017, and Waldrop had updated the show and commissioned Bob Mackie to create the fabulous array of costumes for that run.
But, Cleveland explained, that didn’t happen.
“That production folded before it even opened,” he said. “Mackie was about three-quarters of the way through all the costumes. But those are the costumes that we have for this show!”
So, Bob Mackie is, quite literally, in the house for this production — or in the Kalita Humphreys Theater, to be exact.
“We are one degree away from Cher!” Cleveland enthused. “We’re very fortunate to have those costumes. And adding to the Mackie collection, we’re fortunate to have the wonderful Bruce Coleman handling the finale costumes and Susie Cranford taking the superhero number.”
Casting had to be shifted because of the costumes. Cleveland said Uptown Players always wants to cast the best actors for every role. But this time, they also had to cast with an eye toward who would fit in the costumes.
“They are Bob Mackies,” he said. “You can’t do much to them. I mean, they belong in a museum.”
He added that the costumes are kind of the stars of the show. And the five-man cast has to be precise in changing because there is no room for error.
“This is a cast of five men and 5,000 costumes,” Cleveland joked.
Designer costumes are a big selling point, but Lynch said that patrons are buzzing already about just getting to go to the theater.
It’s been a long road for Uptown Players to reach the point of being next to normal, and the stress is still there. But once the Covid-19 vaccine began making its impact, the company was ready to move forward.
“As soon as the vaccine started to show its efficacy, and numbers were coming down, there were no more excuses. I think that opened the doors for us to get back and talk about getting our actors back to work,” Cleveland said.
Subscribers and theater fans were ready too. After a year of basically nothing going on, Uptown Players has had robust ticket sales already for When Pigs Fly. Safety guidelines must be followed still, but ticket buyers will do what they have to for a night of theater.
“Patrons are excited and hopefully vaccinated,” Lynch said. “We’ve had brand new sales. There will be some changes, but we’ve had nothing but positive feedback.”
Changes are in place to keep the cast, crew and theater-goers safe and healthy. Lynch explained that there will be seats between audience members; playbills can be picked up or digitally accessed, and the ingress and egress of bathroom visits will be monitored.
Uptown Players is ready to do what it needs to do to bring the show to life. Coincidentally, all this somewhat echoes that first production in 2001.
“We were in rehearsals to put that show on, and a month later, 9-11 happens,” Cleveland said. “All of the sudden we were going to do these frivolous numbers in the wake of a national tragedy. Twenty years later, we just have this pandemic and racial tensions and political discourse. But the message here is that it’s OK to laugh. And it’s OK to have hope and optimism.”
When Pigs Fly runs July 9-25. Tickets available now at UptownPlayers.org.