'Come for the fun': Buffalo's fall theater season opens with comedies, mysteries, musicals

‘This year, we’re just going to have fun.”

That’s how artistic director Chris Handley sums up his vision for Alleyway Theatre in 2024-25. “I think, right now, people don’t want to be told what to think or what to do,” he said. “Not everything has to be doom and gloom. We’ve been through doom and gloom. This season just come along for the ride, come for the fun!”

A quick look at the shows coming with Curtain Up! on Sept. 13 (the unofficial celebratory start of the new theater season) echoes that upbeat attitude. Audiences can choose from two well-known musicals (“Newsies” and “The Prom”), two broad comedies (“Wipeout” and “Shipwrecked”), two parodies (“Twisted” and “Dracula”), plus two dramedies (“Tea Party” and “Monsters of the American Cinema”) and one rich history play (“The African Company Presents Richard III”).

At Alleyway, that fun ride is going to be on surfboards, via the age-defying comedy “Wipeout,” the story of three old friends who decide to literally catch a new wave. Up in November, is “The Cottage,” an old-fashioned British sex farce.

Handley said he couldn’t resist booking the show: “It’s so hard to find great comedies,” he said, “and this is a great comedy.”

The theater will follow that with two new plays (“A Kidman Carol” for the holidays and the thriller “Black Bear Island”) and end the season with Heidi Armbruster’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” considered by many to be Christie’s best mystery. Expect to be close to the action – it will be staged in the round.

At Road Less Traveled Productions, Scott Behrend also is changing things around after spending the last few seasons catching up with Covid-19 closures.

“I’m making my best guesses about what’s on people’s minds,” Behrend said. “It became pretty clear that people will come back out for things that have a recognizable title, or that are comedic in nature. There’s still concern about the state of the world we’re in, and we want to make sure we have good stories. That being said, three of our (upcoming) shows are comedies, one is a murder mystery and then there’s a great American play (‘Burn This’).”

The season opener is a Victorian era romp, “Shipwrecked: An Entertainment —The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (as Told by Himself).” It’s the story of a real 19th century explorer whose fantastic tales of adventure captured the public’s hearts until the National Geographic Society exposed him as a fraud. At 90 minutes, Behrend said, “It happens at break-neck speed, it’s very fun and very comedic.”

The dark humor of “Witch,” dealing with themes of belonging, loneliness and a devil, comes in November. Things get crazier in February, with “Our Lady of 121st Street,” by Stephen Adly Guirgis. When a beloved nun’s body goes missing from a funeral parlor, all hell breaks lose.

And, like Alleyway, RLTP is presenting a classic mystery, “Dial M for Murder,” in the Shea’s 710 theater next spring. Behrend says, although the time frame has been moved up about a decade from the classic Hitchcock movie, “we’re trying to do it as authentically as possible.” After all, the phones have to have dials, or what’s the point?

Brendan Didio has multiple roles in a madcap version of the classic horror tale in “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors” from Irish Classical Theater Company.
Jorge Luna Photography

Familiar stories, new looks

The story transformation is more dramatic up the street at Irish Classical Theater Company, which opens with “Dracula” A Comedy of Terrors.” Keelie Sheridan, ICTC’s new artistic director, also is in the cast in this pop-culture send-up of history’s most famous vampire. She will be playing three characters, opposite her husband Jorge Luna as Dracula.

“I wanted to introduce myself to the community,” Sheridan said of her roles, and she looks as though she’s having fun doing it.

“Dracula” – especially a comic version – may seem like an unusual choice for the first show of the first season that Sheridan has scheduled in her new job, but she says it fits perfectly with the company’s goals.

“There are two key parts of our mission. They’re right in our title: Irish and Classical,” she said. “That doesn’t mean (the plays) have to be set in Ireland, or old. They can have themes central to Ireland or be ‘new’ classics. I like updates and takeoffs on familiar stories and characters.”

“We’re being really, really careful with the choices we make, because we want to know we can do them well,” she said. “There’s this relationship that I would love to have with our audiences – that they can trust us to introduce them to their next favorite show.”

That might be this madcap “Dracula.” The classic by Irish-born Bram Stoker has been reworked by Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen into a farce worthy of Mel Brooks, Sheridan said. She saw the play performed in Albany and immediately wanted to bring it to Buffalo.

Her first season also includes “The Fitzgeralds of St. Paul,” a new musical memory play about former Buffalonian F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. The show is considered a preview run, with a Broadway director and cast. Sheridan is thrilled about what she expects will be a “stunning show” and predicts that it’s going to have a long life after Buffalo.

Later shows are “The Loved Ones,” from the 2023 Dublin Theatre Festival; “Dorian,” a mashup of Oscar Wilde’s novel “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” and Wilde’s own life; and the more modern-day story “Crocodile Fever,” a dark comedy set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. (Sheridan describes it as “like Quentin Tarantino meets ‘Derry Girls.’ ”)

Song and dance

Katie Mallinson, artistic director at D’Youville Kavinoky Theatre, also had her first full theater season on her new job picked out when she got an opportunity she couldn’t refuse.

“I had thought we would do things a little smaller to start and ease into the season,” Mallinson said. “Then the opportunity came up to use Shea’s 710 and I thought, We can’t pass this up!”

“A little smaller” wouldn’t work in Shea’s 710, so Mallinson pivoted.

“With a space like that, you have to do something big,” she said. So she turned to one of her own favorites.

“I grew up with ‘Newsies’ (the movie), and I loved seeing it on Disney+,” she said. “I realize it’s Disney and fun, but I do like the message behind it, too. I like seeing the younger artists singing about being the next generation to take charge.”

The “Newsies” shuffle pushed the all-woman comedy “POTUS: Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive” into October on the Kavinoky home stage. Though that coincides with the final weeks before elections, Mallinson says party politics don’t enter into it. The POTUS (president of the United States) of the title never appears in the play, which is about protecting POTUS and saving the free world.

“The subject matter is wonderful and accessible,” Mallinson said. “It allows us to breathe and laugh and talk about issues that are hot. We’re having a conversation and laughing, and the story is purposely nonpartisan. That gives us a chance to do what theater does: bring us together.”

Rest of the stories

At MusicalFare Theatre, every night is “Prom” night this month. “The Prom,” which opened Sept. 4, takes on cultural conflicts that arise when self-centered Broadway actors decide to take up the cause of a lesbian teen who is banned by close-minded adults from bringing another girl to the prom at her Midwestern high school. Look for laughs and lessons learned.

Acceptance also is the theme of “Tea Party,” season opener for the new play theater company First Look Buffalo. When a married cross-dresser named Frank finds a group of men with similar interests, it creates problems for him, his wife and his best friend. The show opens Sept. 13 in the Allendale Theatre on Allen Street (rather than at First Look’s regular venue at Canterbury Woods).

Buffalo United Artists shows another side of rejection with “Monsters of the American Cinema” by Christian St. Croix, which opened Sept. 6 at Compass Performing Arts Center on Elmwood Avenue. A widowed man and his dead husband’s teenage son bond over their love of monster movies before gay bullying threatens their relationship.

O’Connell & Company has found a niche in recent years with shows that provide comic backstories to earlier hits. In 2023, it had a winner with “Wicket,” a “Star Wars” parody; in 2022, “Puffs” riffed on the Harry Potter films, and now comes “Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier,” seeing the musical “Aladdin” from the villain’s (admittedly twisted) point of view. The show opens Sept. 13 in Shea’s Smith Theatre for a fast two-week run. (Despite its Disneyfied roots, this production is recommended for ages 16 and older due to some racy content. )

Ujima Company Inc. opens “The African Company Presents Richard III” on Sept. 13 in the Lorna C. Hill Theatre at 429 Plymouth Ave. In the early 1800s, the country’s first Black theatrical troupe runs into conflict with a white producer when both companies are putting on Shakespeare’s “Richard III” in the same city at the same time. It is based on real events.

Ayden Herreid stars in “Monsters of the American Cinema,” the season opening production by Buffalo United Artists.
Buffalo United Artists

Here is what’s happening to open the 2024-25 Buffalo theater season.

Plaza of the Stars Induction Ceremony. Anthony Chase, veteran theater critic and scholar, will be inducted by Tony-nominated actor Stephen McKinley Henderson at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 9 at Main and Tupper streets in Downtown Buffalo. Chase has played an integral role in Buffalo theater as the founder and producer of the Artie Awards, the host of WBFO’s long-running “Theater Talk,” as a theater professor and Assistant Dean of Arts and Sciences at SUNY Buffalo State University and as a long-time critic whose reviews have appeared in The Buffalo News, among other publications.

Curtain Up! Festivities take place Sept. 13 throughout the Buffalo Theatre District.

Act I is a kickoff party from 5 to 7 p.m. in Shea’s Grand Lobby. Tickets are $90 each; call (716) 847-0850.

Act II features theater performances all starting at 7:30 p.m.

Act III is a free street party at 10 p.m. throughout the Theatre District on Main Street between Chippewa and Tupper streets.

For full details, visit curtainupbuffalo.com.

THE PLAYS

Alleyway Theatre Company, “Wipeout.” Sept. 6-28 at Alleyway, 1 Curtain Up Alley.

Buffalo United Artists, “Monsters of the American Citizen.” Sept. 6-28 at the Compass Performing Arts Center, 545 Elmwood Ave. buffalounitedartists.org

D’Youville Kavinoky Theatre, “Newsies.” Sept. 12-29 at Shea’s 710, 710 Main St. sheas.org

First Look Buffalo Theatre Company, “Tea Party.” Sept. 13-Oct. 5 at the Allendale Theatre, 203 Allen St. firstlookbuffalo.com

Irish Classical Theatre Company, “Dracula (A Comedy of Terrors).” Sept. 13-29 at ICTC, 625 Main St. irishclassical.com

MusicalFare Theatre, “The Prom.” Through Oct. 6 at MusicalFare, 4380 Main St., Amherst (Daemen University campus). musicalfare.com

O’Connell & Company, “Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier.” Sept. 13-22 at Shea’s Smith Theatre, 658 Main St. sheas.org

Road Less Traveled Productions, “Shipwrecked: An Entertainment—The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (as Told by Himself).” Sept. 13-Oct. 13 at Road Less Traveled Theater, 456 Main St. roadlesstraveledproductions.org

Ujima Company Inc., “The African Company Presents Richard the III.” Sept. 13-29 at the Lorna C. Hill Theatre, 429 Plymouth Ave. ujimacoinc.org

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