Arizona Theatre Company

Hartford Stage Presents I WISH YOU LOVE July 6-24

I Wish You Love captures a significant moment in the life of legendary crooner Nat "King" Cole . The play uses Cole's television show to illustrate the man, the times, and the real life drama behind the sanitizing lens of the television camera. It's 1957, and times are changing. President Eisenhower had the Civil Rights Act on his desk, Althea Gibson had won Wimbledon, nine children were about to integrate Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas, and Nat "King" Cole was the first black man that many in America let into their living room. Cole believed that with enough talent and persistence he would be judged on the content of his character as opposed to the color of his skin. Relevant to all ages, this music-filled drama features more than 20 of Cole's timeless classics, including "Get Your Kicks on Route 66" and "Let There Be Love." Tickets for I Wish You Love are $25 to $50. A limited number of $10 "Ten Spot" tickets are also available for all performances, making Hartford Stage among the most affordable entertainment options in Connecticut. Discounts are available for groups of ten or more by calling 860-520-7244. Students of Capital Community College may purchase one $10 ticket to I Wish You Love upon presentation of their student ID at the Hartford Stage box office. All discount programs are subject to availability and cannot be combined with other offers. Hartford Stage has wheelchair accessible seating, assistive listening devices and other amenities. For more information, please call the Hartford Stage box office. Hartford Stage is located at 50 Church Street in downtown Hartford with parking located in the MAT Garage, directly adjacent to the theatre. The theatre is accessible from I-84 and I-91.

Folk singer Woody Guthrie gets cleaned up for company | Arizona ...

Arizona Theatre Company's "Woody Guthrie's American Song" is a celebration of Guthrie's music and the turbulent historical period in which he lived. It is an idealized portrait, long on music, with vignettes from Guthrie's life to provide context.

ATC's production is a delightful musical event with emotional highs and lows, and outstanding performances by an ensemble portraying Guthrie, backed by a seriously hot multi-instrumentalist acoustic trio.

Not surprisingly, it is also a sanitized, technically and politically corrected version of Woody Guthrie. Ironically, Guthrie would not have made it through an audition to play himself in the story of his life.

Woody Guthrie is America's proto-folkie. From the 1930's until the decline of his health due to Huntington's Disease in the 1950's, he both traveled and wandered, writing and performing extensively. His lyrical legacy is felt throughout folk music, from friend Pete Seeger to Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt and Gillian Welch.

Songs, such as "Hard Travelin'," "Bound for Glory," "Worried Man," "The Sinking of the Rueben James" and especially "This Land Is Your Land," are as much a part of the American psyche as works by Irving Berlin or George Gershwin.

Composing to fit his persona as a spokesman of the common man, Guthrie was an oft-brilliant lyricist with a plain and functional view of melody. Guthrie's memorable lyrics and easy melodies made them perfect for subsequent generations to embrace and share around campfires, hootenannies and other sing-alongs.  

As a performer, Guthrie was neither a perfectionist nor overskilled. His rough-hewn, warbling recordings demonstrate that he was a mediocre singer, more expressive than technically correct. His guitar playing was limited to simple chords and strums. His duets with longtime partner Cisco Houston are uniquely off-key, creating a distinctive and instantly recognizable dissonant sound. His recorded oeuvre is as plain and austere as a wooden shack.

Nonetheless, his blending of style, enthusiasm and wordplay was enough to inspire the equally vocally challenged Robert Zimmerman to reinvent himself as Guthrie imitator Bob Dylan. Early after relocating to New York, Dylan made a pilgrimage to visit Guthrie, by then confined to a hospital for the remainder of his life.

'American Song' is a valuable vehicle for discovering the depth and reach of Guthrie's music.

"American Song" is a valuable vehicle for discovering the depth and reach of Guthrie's music. The production also provides insight into the poverty and class struggles of the time. The Great Depression, coupled with the extensive loss of farmland to the Dust Bowl, changed millions of Americans, including Guthrie, into poor migrants, all of them on the road, on foot or riding boxcars, trying to find any honest work ("Hard Travelin'"). This is a period when California officials set up armed roadblocks to prevent displaced poor people from entering the state ("Do-Re-Me"). It was time when labor struggles could still reach the level of armed conflict ("Ludlow Massacre").

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