#Alison Davy

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SALEM, NY — Classic country tribute musicians, The Whiskey River Band, open Fort Salem Theater‘s Mainstage summer season with a concert on Saturday, June 16 at 7 PM.

On Saturday, June 23, at 8 PM and Sunday, June 24, at 2 PM, the Cabaret at Fort Salem Theater begins its summer of events with Couples: A Cabaret, featuring two married couples, Carmen Borgia and Alison Davy, who now live in Catskill after years of living in New York City, and Jay and Lynne Kerr, mom-and-pop owners of  Fort Salem, who live in Hebron after years of living in New York City.

“Carmen and Alison left the city willingly, to find peace and joy in the country,” Mr. Kerr offered in a recent interview. “Lynne and I were drummed out.” “Drums. Always musical,” his wife, Lynne, retorts. “In fact, he was drummed out and I had to follow when our lease ran out.”

The two couples met when Ms. Davy and Mr. Kerr were cast last year in a production of Souvenir at Catskill’s Bridge Street Theater, which later played at The Fort. Davy portrayed the tone-deaf classical singer Florence Foster Jenkins and Kerr, her long suffering accompanist, Cosmé McMoon.

“We had fun,” he says. “You had fun,” offers Davy. She is corrected by her husband, Mr. Borgia. “They both had fun. I know. I had to watch each performance and a whole lot of rehearsals.” Borgia was sound engineer for both venues, and had to wire each actor for sound before they were fully costumed. In his musical life, Borgia is a songwriter whose instrument of choice is the ukulele. “Other than Don Ho, there wasn’t much competition,” he jokes, “and I’ve had pretty much a free ride since he died eleven years ago.”

Carmen Borgia and Alison Davy

Lynne and Jay Kerr

Couples: A Cabaret derives its driving energy from the clever attempts of carping between spouses and couples. When the performers are not trying to top one another, they display their considerable talents in song. Alison Davy loved musical theater in her early teens, but later pursued and achieved bachelor’s and master’s degrees in classical music. She has sung at Lincoln Center, the White House, and extensively in Europe. In the cabaret, she will be singing an art song written for voice and piano, only with her husband’s uke accompaniment. Carmen Borgia sings a few classic uke songs (yes, there are some), and an original song for which he penned music and lyrics, “I Don’t Want to Make My Dreams Come True.”

“We just discovered that Carmen and I have a credit in common,” Lynne Kerr said. “We each appeared on The Uncle Floyd Show in our youth,” referring to comic Floyd Vivino’s cult classic cable show that ran locally in New Jersey and for a time nationally in syndication, which also featured Peter Tork (of The Monkees), Jan and Dean, Cyndi Lauper, and Bon Jovi. Mrs. Kerr’s credits range from Carnegie Hall (“I was in a huge group”) to Manhattan cabaret in such renowned venues as The Village Gate (“That I did solo”). “Though I’m usually booked in Salem singing songs my husband wrote, in the show he’s letting me sing some that people may have heard before.”

“OK, sure, but I thought that this was a great opportunity to present accomplished musicians performing material unfamiliar to them and their audiences,” Jay Kerr said. A musical theater writer, composer, and arranger, whose work has been represented on Broadway, on CD, and extensively at Fort Salem, he conceived a show where these two married couples actually can be six couples, by musically exchanging spouses and the males and females each being a couple as well. “It sounds naughtier than it is,” he says, “by design.” The men sing an Al Jolson song together, the gals sing two touching Broadway duets, Borgia and Mrs. Kerr sing classic bossa nova, and Davy and Mr. Kerr belt out a number written in 1927. “When Jay was a teenager,” notes the younger Ms. Davy, somewhat inaccurately.

Couples: A Cabaret, has limited seating, so reservations are strongly encouraged. The ticket price of $20 includes coffee and tea. More information is available on the theater’s website (fortsalemtheater.com) and tickets can be ordered by calling the theater box office at (518) 854-9200.

Whiskey River Band and Couples: A Cabaret Open Fort Salem Season SALEM, NY -- Classic country tribute musicians, The Whiskey River Band, open Fort Salem Theater…

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Fort Salem Theater Announces Summer 2018 Season

Fort Salem Theater Announces Summer 2018 Season

SALEM, NY — Fort Salem Theater, Washington County’s Theater Home for Music, Musicals, and Cabaret in Salem’s Main Street Business District, has announced its 2018 season. In addition to its bread-and-butter musical and cabaret lineups, the Fort will feature three comedies without music. Several of the shows will play more than one weekend, in repertory. Every summer the theater presents the World…

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Classical Trio Riot with Three Celebrates "The Nature of Music"

Classical Trio Riot with Three Celebrates “The Nature of Music”

The dynamic classical trio Riot with Three – Alison Davy, soprano, Javier Oviedo, saxophone, and Gene Rohrer, piano – make a triumphant return to Catskill’s intimate Bridge Street Theatre on Saturday September 30 at 7:30 pm with an eclectic evening of contemporary and classical chamber works entitled “The Nature of Music”. In this exquisite and wide-ranging program, which includes works by…

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SALEM, NY — Fort Salem Theater opens a co-production with Bridge Street Theatre, Catskill, from Friday, July 14, through Sunday, June 16, on the Mainstage at its Washington County venue. Souvenir: The Florence Foster Jenkins Musical is subtitled “A Fantasia” on the life of Mrs. Jenkins, the world’s most famous lousy singer.

The real-life Florence Foster Jenkins performed her vocals for society audiences in the late nineteen-thirties through 1944, singing mostly classical pieces and making several recordings. All the smart, famous people, including Cole Porter and Noel Coward, loved to hear her sing. The pinnacle of her singing career came in the fall of 1944 when two thousand people were turned away from her sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall.

Souvenir tells the story of Jenkins rise to renown in a twelve-year collaboration with Cosmé McMoon, her long-suffering piano accompanist. McMoon, a hugely unsuccessful songwriter, allied with Jenkins in an effort to bring meaning to his life. She allied with him because most of her other accompanists left in horror at her highly inaccurate attempts to duplicate melodies. Together they form what becomes a warm, platonic relationship: he working hard to get her to sing the right notes; she working hard to give him the sense of confidence he lacks in his personal life and his work.

Souvenir had its initial off-Broadway run at the York Theatre in Manhattan, and then, after a stop at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, opened on Broadway in late 2005. It starred Tony-winner Judy Kaye as Mrs. Jenkins. Meryl Streep was Oscar-nominated for playing the title role in the 2017 film, Florence Foster Jenkins.

Alison Davy

Jay Kerr

 Starring in Fort Salem’s version, which had its own tryout at Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill this past March, is opera diva Alison Davy. She has appeared in opera and oratorio internationally, including performances with the Prague Philharmonic, Centro Musica Antica and Parma Symphony in Italy, and Lincoln Center in New York City. She has sung with the Washington National Opera, at Caramoor, with the East Bay Chamber Orchestra in San Fransisco, in the Hamptons and at the White House. In fact, Alison has spent a lifetime singing pitch-perfect in preparation for this role in which she must consistently and amusingly sing off-key.

Ms. Davy is joined in Salem by the Fort’s artistic director, Jay Kerr, who, despite singing and acting appearances on Broadway while he was in college, has spent the majority of his seventy-one years, like McMoon, sitting behind the piano while someone else performs. He brings to the role of McMoon intimate knowledge of accompanying complicated performers, including Judy Kaye herself, and Sandy Dennis, Tovah Feldshuh, Anita Gillette, Donna McKechnie, Charlotte Rae, Elaine Stritch, and Joanne Woodward. He coached Broadway veteran Phil Silvers in his only Tony-award winning role, in Stephen Sondheim’s Forum in 1971.

Reviewers of the Catskill production called Alison Davy “laughingly brilliant,” and “endearing, with a giddy energy.” Comments on Kerr included “lovely, with just the right sense of the sardonic,” able to “lob one-liners at us with sculpted precision.” Cornelia Seckel, in the online Culturally Speaking Journal, wrote “Alison Davy and Jay Kerr, both outstanding actors and musicians, have a powerful connection, a bond so strong one forgets they are actors on a stage…”

Souvenir is directed by Florence Hayle, herself a Broadway performer who came out of retirement at the age of 82 to star in the 2011 Fort Salem musical, Senior Moments. J. Peter Bergman, in Berkshire Bright Focus, praises her vision as “a choice one, a grand one … wrapped in pretty parchment and a grand old satin bow.”

Souvenir: The Florence Foster Jenkins Musical plays July 14-16, Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday afternoon at 2 PM. Tickets and information are available online at fortsalemtheater.com or by calling the theater’s box office, (518) 854-9200.

    Fort Salem Theater Hosts “Souvenir: The Florence Foster Jenkins Musical” SALEM, NY — Fort Salem Theater opens a co-production with Bridge Street Theatre, Catskill, from Friday, July 14, through Sunday, June 16, on the Mainstage at its Washington County venue.

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Bridge Street Theatre Presents Performathon Fundraiser

Bridge Street Theatre Presents Performathon Fundraiser

Do you (or anyone you know) have a talent you want to share with the world? This Memorial Day weekend, Catskill’s Bridge Street Theatre will give you a chance to strut your stuff, whatever it may be, when they present a Performathon Fundraiser in their beautiful new Mainstage auditorium. Want to haul out that old accordion or maybe see your child perform her magic act on the stage of a…

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Fort Salem Theater Announces 2017 Season

Fort Salem Theater Announces 2017 Season

FORT SALEM THEATER SPRING AND SUMMER, 2017 APRIL 21-22   Li’l Abner. California Musical Theater Ensemble, featuring students from Huntington Beach Academy for the Performing Arts. Directed by Tim Nelson. Special Student Rates. $20 adult/$10 High School Srs & younger. Reservations: 518.854.9200. 8PM 30        Shanara Gabrielle: Tilting at Windmills. Accomplished recording artist from regional…

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“Souvenir” Opens Bridge Street Theatre’s 2017 Subscription Season

“Souvenir” Opens Bridge Street Theatre’s 2017 Subscription Season

On October 25, 1944, wealthy (and tone-deaf) soprano Florence Foster Jenkins and her accompanist Cosme McMoon performed a recital at Carnegie Hall. Tickets sold out weeks in advance; an estimated 2,000 people were turned away at the door. The world of music has never quite recovered. Come share the hilarious and touching tale of this unlikely pair in the musical “Souvenir” at Catskill’s Bridge…

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Bridge Theatre Announces 2017 Season of Theatre and Cabaret

Bridge Theatre Announces 2017 Season of Theatre and Cabaret

2017 Theatre Season A brilliant selection of plays for 2017. A musical sensation, a world-premier comedy. a Pulitzer-prize-winning classic, a powerful “Best New Play” about impossible choices, and a lovely and intimate Lanford Wilson work especially for Veteran’s Day. Purchase a Season Subscription now for just $100 for all five plays (like getting one play free). You can pick your performance…