by Doug Hughes, Director of Marketing

Are you unfamiliar with the classic comedy On The 20th Century, which SBMT will be presenting in concert format April 18 and 19? Allow us to introduce you to a half dozen of the main characters.

Oscar Jaffe (Walter M. Mayes) is an egomaniacal Broadway Director, scrambling to save his reputation from ruin and collapse by getting the great movie star and his former protégé and paramour, Lily Garland, to star in a play that he doesn’t even have a script for yet. The thought of getting Lily back, both as star and lover, fills him with an excitement he hasn’t felt in years.

Lily Garland (Alicia Teeter) is a great film star who started out as a plain pianist and was made into a Broadway star under Oscar’s tutelage. Their romance burned brightly for a number of years and then they came to a parting of the ways when Lily took an offer to star in a Hollywood picture. She became a great success and now lives a very grand life with mansions, fancy cars, servants, etc. She travels with her current boy toy in tow, Bruce Granit, but she knows deep down that she is not fulfilled artistically by her film work.

Bruce Granit (Steve Allhoff) is a vain pretty boy who is trying to ride the Lily train to stardom and is terrified he’s going to lose his lunch ticket if she goes back to Oscar.

Leticia Peabody Primrose (Ruth E. Stein) is an eccentric millionaire and religious zealot who offers to underwrite Oscar’s play because of the religious overtones in the story. There’s something off about her, but we can’t quite figure it out until it is revealed.

Owen O’Malley (Derek DeMarco) and Oliver Webb (Michael Rhone) are Oscar’s long suffering “musketeers“ (one is dyspeptic, the other always sipping from a flask), who run his business, run interference, and try to stay one step ahead of disaster as they work tirelessly to help Oscar’s machinations bear fruit.

All this takes place on a train trip from Chicago to New York in 16 hours.

This delightful concert production is doubling as a spring fundraiser, with all personnel donating their time for your entertainment and to help sustain SBMT into the future. Please join us on April 18 or 19 at the Saratoga Civic Theater. Tickets are still available at SouthBayMT.com or by calling 408-266-4734.