OC-SayGoodnightGracie

A ProVIDEO Comedy & Theater Series Event TOLLAND THEATREWORKS LLC

Say Goodnight Gracie with

ALAN SAFIER as George Burns Written by RUPERT HOLMES Directed by MICHAEL WHITE Portions of the play have been adapted from the reminiscences of George Burns. Say Goodnight Gracie is produced with the full approval and cooperation of the George Burns and Gracie Allen Estate.

Produced on Broadway by Say Goodnight Gracie LLC. Originally produced at The Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

EXCLUSIVE TOUR DIRECTION BY THE BRAD SIMON ORGANIZATION, INC.

SAT, APR 30, 2011 | Capitol Theater Bottled water and beverages in Overture Refillable Souvenir Cups are allowed in the theater during select performances. Purchase a souvenir cup for $3 plus the cost of your drink at any of the concession locations in the lobby, and bring it back next time for a refill.

This program is part of Overture’s Take 10 Series for students and educators. Funding for Take 10 is provided by contributors to the Ovation Fund. Learn how you can be part of supporting Overture’s community and education programs at overturecenter.com/contribute.

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Overture’s free and low-cost community and education programs are at the heart of our mission to engage the entire community in the arts. In fact, last season, these programs served more people in our community than the total number of tickets sold to all of our performances. These programs are possible only through the generosity of contributors to the Ovation Fund – people just like you who recognize the transforming benefits of the arts and want to ensure that everyone in our community can experience them.

LEARN MORE WHEN YOU MAKE YOUR DONATION ONLINE AT OVERTURECENTER.COM/CONTRIBUTE. OVERTURE’S FREE AND LOW-COST COMMUNITY AND EDUCATION PROGRAMS INCLUDE: Community Ticket Vouchers, Kids in the Rotunda, Duck Soup Cinema, Take 10, International Festival, Overture Galleries, Artist Residencies, Community Arts Access Program, OnStage Performing Arts Series, The Tommy Awards, Educator Workshops, Meet the Artist, Wisconsin Writers Series and Overture After Work

OVATION FUND: Community. Education. Diversity.

CAST George Burns............................................................................ALAN SAFIER The voice of Gracie Allen........................................................... DIDI CONN Say Goodnight Gracie will be performed without an intermission.

Audience alert: this production may use smoke effects.

The actors and stage manager employed in this production are members of Actors Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States.

The original Broadway production of Say Goodnight Gracie opened at the Helen Hayes Theatre on October 10, 2002. It was directed by John Tillinger, and was produced by William Franzblau, Jay Harris, Louise Westergaard, Larry Spellman, Elsa Daspin Haft, Judith Resnick, Anne Gallagher, Libby Adler Mages, Mari Glick Stuart, Martha R. Gasparian, Bruce Lazarus, Lawrence S. Toppall and Jae French.

Use of cameras, videotape recorders, audio recorders, and/or any other type of recording device during a performance is strictly prohibited. For the enjoyment of the audience, please turn off all cell phones and pagers prior to entering the theatre.

THE NEW 25TH ANNIVERSARY PRODUCTION

TUE, MAY 10 – SUN, MAY 15 Overture Hall

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Say Goodnight Gracie | Overture Center 3

THE ARTISTS ALAN SAFIER (George Burns) celebrates five decades on stage, on television, in commercials, and in voice-overs, with his tour de force performance as everyone’s favorite centenarian, George Burns.

Alan has played many famous people in his stage career, including Albert Einstein in the world-premiere musical The Smartest Man in the World, John Adams in 1776, Spiro Agnew in Gore Vidal’s An Evening with Richard M. Nixon, Charles J. Guiteau in the Los Angeles premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins and Truman Capote in the hit off-Broadway revival of New Faces of 1952.

Alan’s first stage appearance was at the age of nine, when he played Lord Low-hat in an adaptation of Dr. Suess’s Bartholomew & the Oobleck. He was hooked. He continued acting in school, teen theatre, summer stock, and regional and community theatre productions. He also worked as a radio disc jockey while in high school and college.

After receiving an MFA in Acting at Ohio University, where he studied under the esteemed Bob Hobbs, Alan debuted off-Broadway in another play called Say Goodnight, Gracie (this one about neither George nor Gracie!). Other New York stage credits include Scrambled Feet, Bend Your Ear and Once in a Lifetime. Some of his regional theatre credits include Romeo & Juliet, Steve Martin’s The Underpants, Littlechap in Stop the World, I Want to Get Off, Bluntschli in Shaw’s Arms & the Man, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, and Gratiano in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (in which he co-starred with legendary Group Theatre actor Morris Carnovsky).

While living and working in New York in the 70s and 80s, he studied with legendary acting teacher Wynn Handman and with Academy Award-winning actress Beatrice Straight.

West coast credits include a six-month run as Herb Schwartz in Deb Laufer’s hit comedy The Last Schwartz at The Zephyr in Hollywood; Lou, the homeless Vietnam veteran, in Steve Tesich’s The Speed of Darkness; Michael in the L.A. premiere of The Men from the Boys (Mart Crowley’s sequel to his seminal play The Boys in the Band); Stephen in Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice; Frenchy in Clifford Odets’s Rocket to the Moon; Buddy Fidler in the Cy Cole4 Overture Center | Say Goodnight Gracie

man musical City of Angels; and Maltby & Shire’s musical revue, Closer Than Ever.

Alan Safier may be familiar to audiences from hundreds of television and radio voice-overs (most notably as the Kibbles ’n Bits dog!) and from guest appearances on television series (most recently on “The Wizards of Waverly Place”). He also teaches voice-over and acting workshops at universities and theatre festivals across the country. He is the author of the play My Father’s Voice and several published short stories. He is a frequent guest artist at the William Inge Theatre Festival in Independence, Kansas.

His new CD of American standards from the 1930s and 1940s, Alan Safier Sings the Songs of George & Gracie’s Heyday, was released in February, 2011. He also composed the song “Another Tuesday Morning,” featured on the Jim Brickman CD Simple Things.

Alan grew up in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, and is a passionate Cleveland Indians baseball fan, an avid reader, a lover of theatre and old Hollywood movies, and a politics junkie. He currently resides in New York City.

Say Goodnight Gracie is the 68th production in Alan’s stage career. Please feel free to browse Alan’s website at alansafier. com.

DIDI CONN (voice of Gracie Allen) appeared on Broadway in Lost in Yonkers, Julie Taymor’s The Green Bird and A Christmas Carol. Off-Broadway credits include The Vagina Monologues; The Primary English Class; Love, Loss and What I Wore and Consequences and the Lesson. Regionally, she has done such shows as Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (L.A. premiere), Division Street, Birdbath, Room Service, It Had to Be You, Anything Goes and Enter Laughing, plus six years in the acting company of the Sundance Playwrights’ Lab. In films, she had starring roles in You Light Up My Life, Grease and Grease II, and is the executive producer of the Paramount/ABC television movie We’ll Always Be Together! Other films include The Magic Show, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Almost Summer, Thomas and the Magic Railroad, and the title role in the Oscar-winning short “Violet.” In television, she was a series regular in Danny Thomas’s “The Practice,” “Benson,” and “Shining

THE ARTISTS Time Station” on PBS. She lives with her husband, composer David Shire, and their son Daniel, in Hudson Valley, N.Y.

theatrical history to singly win Tony Awards for Best Book, Best Music and Best Lyrics, while Drood itself won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The New York Drama Desk MICHAEL WHITE (director/stage bestowed identical honors upon Holmes manager) began a lifelong love affair with and his creation. the American theatre while still in high The Mystery Writers of America gave his school. As a young actor, director, designer Broadway comedy-thriller Accomplice their and technician, he won numerous awards in coveted Edgar Award — the second time statewide theatre competitions, and earned he received this honor. His tour de force for a scholarship to the prestigious University actor Stacy Keach, Solitary Confinement, set of Texas Department of Drama. In addition a box-office record at the Kennedy Center to his work onstage, he designed scenery, and was transferred to Broadway. He most lighting, and sound and special effects, recently wrote the book for the stage musiand wrote and directed his first original cal adaptation of Robin and the 7 Hoods. play while still in high school. By the time His book for the musical adaptation of he graduated, he was already a veteran of Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty, with score by nine Equity productions on the professional Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, broke stage. all box office records at the Huntington After a distinguished collegiate career, Theatre in Boston. Holmes also created Michael returned to the professional theand wrote the critically acclaimed Emmy atre, wherein he served as an actor, director, Award–winning television series “Remember designer and stage manager in professional WENN,” set in the golden age of radio. theatres from coast to coast.

His first novel, Where the Truth Lies, from Recent credits include stage managing Random House, is already into its second Bermuda Avenue Triangle starring Renee edition and is available in both hardcover Taylor, Joseph Bologna and Lainie Kazan, and audio book. For more about all the and the extended national tour of The Odd above, be sure to visit www.RupertHolmes.

Couple (female version) starring Barbara com.

Eden, a show in which he also served as assistant director and lighting supervisor. As GEORGE BURNS was an Academy a director, he most recently helmed the na- Award–winning actor, comedian, dancer, tional touring production of Say Goodnight singer and best-selling author who began Gracie, and the world premiere production his career around the turn of one century of playwright Lizzie Maxwell’s Confessions and ended it around the turn of the next. of a Nice Jewish Girl.

He started performing in a barbershop As an actor, Michael’s credits range quartet, then moved on to vaudeville, from Shakespeare, Williams and Albee to one-reel shorts and feature films. He went light comedies, including the box office on to a top-rated radio show for 17 years, a record-setting tour of Hanky Panky. His top-rated television show for another eight performances have also been seen in years, and finally, over the last 30 years of numerous films and television shows. Of his life, played Las Vegas. Meanwhile he cut all the roles, all the assignments and all the hats he has worn in all the many shows, his all-time favorite remains the role of husband to his beloved wife Jennifer, and A father to his cherished daughter Michelle.

And today, more than 30 years after it OF IS all began, that love affair with the American theatre is still going strong.

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RUPERT HOLMES (author) received a Best Play 2003 Tony nomination for Say Goodnight Gracie. For his Broadway musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Holmes became the first individual in

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THE ARTISTS record albums, appeared in top-grossing movies and TV specials, and he still enjoyed a good cigar (a habit he picked up when he was a teenager).

Nathan Birnbaum (his real name) was born in New York City on January 20, 1896. He was working in vaudeville with Billy Lorraine in 1923 when they both decided to move on. Enter Gracie Allen. This pairing was to last, onstage, and off-, for the next 42 years. They worked their way up as George perfected his writing skills; George played the straight man to Gracie’s dizzy character with her “illogical logic.” After years together on stage, the pair moved on to radio, where “The Burns and Allen Show” was a top-rated show for almost two decades. By 1950, George felt they were ready for the new medium of television, and the show transferred well. For the next eight years, Burns and Allen entertained audiences with plot lines about home life, neighbors, and even vaudeville routines.

George lost his wife and partner to heart disease in 1964. To take away some of the pain of loss, George threw himself into his work. He developed the enormously popular “Mr. Ed” television series and “No Time For Sergeants.” George continued to play the nightclub circuit, make guest appearances on TV, and speak at colleges. Then in 1975, at the age of 79 and less than a year after having triple bypass surgery, George rekindled another career: 36 years after his last appearance in a feature film, George took over a starring role in the film version of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys; he deservedly won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Over the next two decades, George appeared in eight more films, including perhaps his most popular role as the title character in 1977’s top-grossing film, Oh, God!. George’s busy schedule continued until he was 98, when he had a serious fall in his bathtub. George kept telling everyone, however, that he planned to stay in show business “until I’m the only one left!”

On January 20, 1996, George Burns celebrated his 100th birthday. Less than two months later, on March 9, he quietly passed into entertainment history.

GRACIE ALLEN, born to a vaudeville family on July 26, 1902, in San Francisco, made her stage debut at the age of three.

By the time she met George, however, 6 Overture Center | Say Goodnight Gracie

Gracie was enrolled in secretarial school in New York, feeling that show business life was too uncertain. One evening in 1923, after watching the about-to-split up act of Burns & Lorraine, she went backstage where a dapper young George convinced her to become his new partner. (In actuality, Gracie had already decided to take the plunge back into show business; George always felt it was his “irresistible charm” that convinced her.) They traveled the circuit, with George writing the act and playing straight man to Gracie’s dizzy character.

Surprising, at the beginning of their partnership Gracie played the straight character and George had the funny lines. When it became apparent that Gracie was getting more laughs with her straight lines, they switched roles, and Burns & Allen began their upward climb. (One classic example of Gracie’s public persona: a reporter once asked her, “Were you the oldest one in your family growing up?” Gracie quickly replied, “Oh, no. My mother and father were much older!”) Their first big break came in 1925, when they were booked to play 16 weeks on the Orpheum circuit. They were married in Cleveland on January 7, 1926, and shortly thereafter, broke in their new act, the now famous “Lamb Chops.” It was an immediate hit, and they were soon playing to huge crowds all across the country. Despite a hectic schedule, George and Gracie still found time to make movies; between 1933 and 1939, they appeared in a total of 13 features, including College Humor, We’re Not Dressing, and Big Broadcast of 1936.

Additionally, Gracie appeared in three films on her own.

By the mid-1930s, the energetic young couple was ready to start a family, and they adopted two children, Sandy and Ronnie.

They soon moved into their home in Beverly Hills, where George and Gracie resided for the rest of their lives. “The Burns and Allen Show” remained one of the top radio shows during its nearly 20-year run, with 45 million listeners tuning in each week. When they switched to television in 1950, the show was equally successful. When it went off the air in 1958 due to Gracie’s retirement, it was the longest-running situation comedy in television history. Six years after her retirement, on August 27, 1964, Gracie Allen died of heart failure.

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