09/25/18
HAYS, Kan. – “Mamma Mia!,” a funny, lighthearted tale set in a Greek island paradise, will begin the 2018-2019 theatre season at Fort Hays State University.

The musical comedy romance revolves around a girl’s desire to find her birth father to walk her down the aisle in her approaching wedding. To do so, she secretly invites three of her mother’s former lovers to the wedding.

The first of four performances is at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 4, in Felten-Start Theatre in Malloy Hall on the Fort Hays State campus. Other 7:30 performances are Friday, Oct. 5, and Saturday, Oct. 6. A 2:30 p.m. matinee performance will be on Sunday, Oct. 7.

Written in 1999 and featuring music from the 1970s Swedish pop group ABBA, “Mamma Mia!” was made into a hugely popular movie in 2008 starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Amanda Siefried.

Three other offerings are on the season schedule, two plays and an opera. All performances will be in Felten-Start. Complete listings for music and theatre performances are available on the Department of Music and Theatre website, fhsu.edu/music-and-theatre/arts-calendar.

Tickets are $15 for the public and $10 for students and senior citizens. Season tickets are $50 for the public, $25 for students and $30 for senior citizens.

Seats for individual plays can be reserved in three ways:

• Online at webapps.fhsu.edu/theatreonlinereservations
  • Email to fhsu.musicandtheatre.boxoffice@gmail.com
  •     By phone, 785-628-4533

In the season’s second production, Thursday, Nov. 15, through Sunday, Nov. 18, the comedy turns darker with “Rancho Mirage” by Steven Dietz, a look at the secrets of three suburban couples, all longtime friends, when they gather at a dinner party in their affluent subdivision. Secrets and conflicts start coming out in a black comedy that is a satire on life in a gated American community.

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday with a 2:30 p.m. matinee on Sunday.

On a lighter note, the next production is Tony Award winning play from 1963, “Barefoot in the Park” by Neil Simon. The play features newlyweds Paul, a buttoned-down lawyer, and Corie, an impulsive, enthusiastic romantic. Honeymoon over, they begin life in their first apartment. The complications begin with the clash between Paul’s career and Corie’s feelings, and deepen when Corie sets up her widowed mother with a neighbor.

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 28, through Saturday, March 2. A Sunday matinee is at 2:30 p.m. March 3.

Wolfgang Mozart’s comic opera “The Marriage of Figaro,” written in 1786, closes the season. The opera follows the adventures of servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married despite the schemes of their aristocratic employer, Count Almaviva, who has designs on Susanna. Figaro, Susanna, the county and the counts wife, and the action of the opera is conducted among the competing schemes of the cunning servant and the philandering count.

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 4, through Saturday, April 6, with the Sunday matinee at 2:30 p.m.