"World Premiere of a musical in one act"

My interest having been piqued at the NAMT Songwriters Showcase with the song "Mrs. Remington" (see previous post), I went to see THE STORY OF MY LIFE last night at the Berkeley Theatre. It was the only night I had free, but it turned out to be lucky since Monday is Pay What You Can Night! I was feeling generous so I paid $20 for my ticket (apparently most people pay $10, so hey, I'm not as cheap as I thought).

THE STORY OF MY LIFE, with book by Brian Hill, and Music and Lyrics by Neil Bartram, was developed at the Manhattan Theatre Club and was directed by Michael Bush, most recently the director of artistic production for the Manhattan Theatre club. Hey, and in the thank you section the writers thank Hunter Bell (among many others, including Richard Ouzounian) from [title of show] for contributing to the development of THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

The house was almost full (maybe I'm the only one who didn't know ahead of time that it was PWYC!) -- not bad for a Monday night!

Brent Carver played Thomas, and Jeffrey Kuhn played Alvin and they were both really terrific. They both had so much stage charisma that you forget there are only two people on stage for 105 minutes (not the 90 minutes outlined in the program!). And Jeffrey did a fabulous job on "Mrs. Remington", my favorite song in the show.

Luckily for me there weren't any speaker hiss problems that stopped the show on opening night and everything went smoothly!

Canstage Artistic Director Martin Bragg says in the program:

"THE STORY OF MY LIFE is a perfect portrayal of how a friendship can have the power to change our lives forever. In this beautiful show, the specific easily becomes uniersal -- this is the story of Alvin and Thomas, but it is bigger than that; friendship and human connection are universal needs. I hope you leave the theatre today remembering a Thomas or an Alvin in your life"

Congrats Neil and Brian!

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