Bucks County Playhouse

Tammy Grimes, that most individual of entertainers, swept regally into New Hope Tuesday night to give the Bucks County Playhouse's new era a stylish send-off. Grimes is a two-time Tony Award-winning actress (for The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Private Lives) and a chanteuse of formidable flair. The singer always has the actress with her, as can be verified at An Evening With Tammy Grimes, which opened the Playhouse's 1988 season. The program is a rare treat - a demonstration, in part, of how to turn almost any ditty into an art song.

After rescuing the iconic Bucks County Playhouse from a year of dormancy, the new owners and operators are aiming to light up the New Hope stage for a May fund-raiser, two summer plays, and a Christmas holiday show. "I can't imagine what it was like in 1939," when playwright Moss Hart put on the first show, Springtime for Henry, after converting the decaying 18th-century gristmill, Broadway producer Jed Bernstein said Tuesday. "It will be pretty exciting when the lights blaze on again.

Educating Rita - the play, not the movie made from it - is making its first appearance in these parts at the Bucks County Playhouse in a production distinguished by some trenchant comic acting by Brian Bedford. Bedford plays the professor who educates Rita, a working-class girl with an insatiable hunger for high culture, portrayed by Kitty Sullivan. A hit in London in 1980, the two-character play is a funny variation on the Pygmalion theme by Britain's Willy Russell, a working-class bloke who dropped out of school in Liverpool at the age of 15 to join a rock group.

Broadway producer Jed Bernstein has a dream about the Bucks County Playhouse - "I'm sitting in an Adirondack chair in the gazebo, watching the people arrive for a show. " On Monday his dream will come true - minus the chair - when the theater overlooking the Delaware River in New Hope reopens after being dark for 18 months. Theatergoers will find a playhouse that's bright and buffed inside and out, after $3 million in renovations to restore its rustic look and charm while providing much-needed improvements.

The Bucks County Playhouse has canceled two productions, the musical Company and An Evening With John Raitt and Anna Maria Alberghetti, that had been scheduled to run through Nov. 6. Playhouse producer Hal Grossman said the productions were canceled because of poor advance ticket sales. "It became apparent it was financially unfeasible to bring both shows to the playhouse," he said in a recent news release. The playhouse's season ended Sunday with the final performance of a female version of The Odd Couple, starring Sandy Dennis and Kaye Ballard.

Maybe you remember "Educating Rita" - the movie. It came out about five years ago and starred Michael Caine and Julie Walters. A delightful movie. It was based on a play that had been a smash hit in London. You can now see that play at the Bucks County Playhouse and it's even better than the movie. The plot consists of a series of meetings between two characters - Rita, played by Kitty Sullivan, and Frank, played by Brian Bedford. Rita is a hairdresser - her working-class origins obvious in every word she utters.

The newly reopened Bucks County Playhouse is already planning a world premiere, and a high-level one, too: a production based on Stephen King's novel Misery , which the playhouse will produce along with two big backers, Warner Bros. and Castle Rock Entertainment. The playhouse, in New Hope, named no cast in an announcement of the premiere Thursday, but listed a creative team that is mostly Broadway-based. It's not unusual for the 50-plus professional stages in metropolitan Philadelphia to stage world premieres - about a fourth of all plays performed here are being done for the first time.

New Hope Mayor Larry Keller can see it now. It's Tuesday, opening night for Barefoot in the Park at the Bucks County Playhouse, and he's in the spotlight, delivering a line or two as the Delivery Person. For a few minutes, he's on the same stage where Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley starred in the debut of Neil Simon's play 49 years ago. "I think it will be fun," Keller says. "I'm sure a lot of my friends will come and get some giggles at seeing the mayor on stage for the first time.

New Hope's Bucks County Playhouse has a long tradition of sending actors on to stardom, but this time the ascension starts backstage: Playhouse producing director Jed Bernstein on Wednesday was named president of New York City's Lincoln Center. He'll succeed Reynolds Levy in January. Bernstein was already an industry veteran when he reopened the dormant playhouse last year, having led the Broadway League for 11 years. Under his leadership, the playhouse announced a 2013 summer season that includes a new Terrence McNally play, Mothers and Sons , starring Tyne Daly, and a coproduction with the Media Theatre of Mame, starring Andrea McArdle.

Let's play a word association game: If I say "Mister Man," what image comes to mind? How about "hobbling?" "Dirty birdie?" For much of the moviegoing public, these associations end at the 1990 film adaptation of Stephen King's thriller Misery , with Kathy Bates' deranged nurse and "number-one fan" Annie Wilkes looming over James Caan as her bedbound prisoner, romance author Paul Sheldon. Bates' Oscar-winning performance also looms over Bucks County Playhouse's world premiere stage play Misery , also adapted from King's novel, and that's exactly the problem with this production.

Theater 1812 Productions: Dave & Aaron Go to Work Wordless comedy about 2 men sharing a tiny apartment. Closes 12/31. Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey Pl.; 215-592-9560. www.1812productions.org . $22. A John Waters Christmas Critically acclaimed one-man show featuring monologues on holiday-themed topics. 11/29. Trocadero Theatre, 1003 Arch St.; 215-922-6888. $39.50 advance; $42 day of show. Aladdin: A Musical Panto The discovery of a magic lamp sets a young man off on a grand adventure.

The newly reopened Bucks County Playhouse is already planning a world premiere, and a high-level one, too: a production based on Stephen King's novel Misery , which the playhouse will produce along with two big backers, Warner Bros. and Castle Rock Entertainment. The playhouse, in New Hope, named no cast in an announcement of the premiere Thursday, but listed a creative team that is mostly Broadway-based. It's not unusual for the 50-plus professional stages in metropolitan Philadelphia to stage world premieres - about a fourth of all plays performed here are being done for the first time.

The newly reopened Bucks County Playhouse is already planning a world premiere, and a high-level one, too: a production based on Stephen King's novel Misery , which the playhouse will produce along with two big backers, Warner Brothers and Castle Rock Entertainment. The playhouse, in New Hope, named no cast in an announcement of the premiere Thursday, but it listed a creative team that is mostly Broadway-based. It's not unusual for the 50-plus professional stages in metropolitan Philadelphia to stage world premieres - about a fourth of all plays performed here are being done for the first time.

New Hope Mayor Larry Keller can see it now. It's Tuesday, opening night for Barefoot in the Park at the Bucks County Playhouse, and he's in the spotlight, delivering a line or two as the Delivery Person. For a few minutes, he's on the same stage where Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley starred in the debut of Neil Simon's play 49 years ago. "I think it will be fun," Keller says. "I'm sure a lot of my friends will come and get some giggles at seeing the mayor on stage for the first time.

Radiant in the first production of its new era, the once-celebrated and more recently dark Bucks County Playhouse has reopened in its former New Hope gristmill on the Delaware River. The theater itself is spiffy in an air-conditioned redo, the company is once again professional with an Actors' Equity contract — and the debut show is a winner. That musical revue, A Grand Night for Singing, is packed with more than 30 tunes by composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. Despite its simplicity as a basic song list and nothing more, the Playhouse production.

Broadway producer Jed Bernstein has a dream about the Bucks County Playhouse - "I'm sitting in an Adirondack chair in the gazebo, watching the people arrive for a show. " On Monday his dream will come true - minus the chair - when the theater overlooking the Delaware River in New Hope reopens after being dark for 18 months. Theatergoers will find a playhouse that's bright and buffed inside and out, after $3 million in renovations to restore its rustic look and charm while providing much-needed improvements.

Waiting for the curtain to rise, theatergoers could trace more than 60 years of Bucks County Playhouse shows from signs on the theater's walls listing each season's lineup. "What happened to the signs?" the Playhouse's new owners and operators were asked at last week's open house, when they announced plans to restore the closed theater to "its former glory. " Hugh Marshall has them - at least 20 of them - and he is willing to give them back. "It was after the 2005 flood, and stagehands were throwing out the signs," Marshall said Monday.

After rescuing the iconic Bucks County Playhouse from a year of dormancy, the new owners and operators are aiming to light up the New Hope stage for a May fund-raiser, two summer plays, and a Christmas holiday show. "I can't imagine what it was like in 1939," when playwright Moss Hart put on the first show, Springtime for Henry, after converting the decaying 18th-century gristmill, Broadway producer Jed Bernstein said Tuesday. "It will be pretty exciting when the lights blaze on again.