Barbara McCulloh (Agnes) Whether on stage, screen, or in the concert hall, Barbara McCulloh’s varied talents have made her an audience and critical favorite around the country and the globe.  Equally at home in musical or dramatic productions, Broadway audiences enjoyed her playing and covering the role of Anna in The King and I with Lou Diamond Phillips at the Neil Simon Theatre for well over a year. Peter Pan fans will remember her as Mrs. Darling in both the long successful Broadway run and the A&E film starring Cathy Rigby. More recently, she was in the household of Richard Greenberg’s The House In Town at Lincoln Center and national audiences were treated to her performances as Blanche in the tour of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs.  As an accomplished classical actress, Barbara’s regional credits include Hamlet, Tom Jones, Wings, Tartuffe, Hayfever, Macbett, Irma La Douce, The Philadelphia Story, Much Ado About Nothing, The Foreigner, Vanities, The Sound of Music, The Taming of the Shrew, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Recent starring roles have been in Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Sylvia, Blithe Spirit, As Bees In Honey Drown at, among others, the Pittsburgh Public, Walnut Street Theatre, Indiana Rep, Studio Arena, Syracuse Stage, Pioneer Theatre, American Heartland Theatre, Sacramento Music Circus, Delaware Theatre Co., Bristol Riverside, Barter, Olney, Tennessee Rep., Ford’s, North Carolina Theatre, North Shore, Riverside(Vero Beach), and Virginia Shakespeare. Her performance in 110 In The Shade earned her a Barrymore nomination as best actress in Philadelphia; her creation of Pauline in the world premiere of The Sweet Revenge of Louisa May won her a Helen Hayes nomination, again for best actress.  She began her career in New York Off-Broadway in Romberg’s Up in Central Park, and continued Off-Broadway creating the role of Carolina in the Outer Circle Critics’ winner Kuni-Leml. From there she did the national tour of South Pacific with Richard Kiley. Other Off Broadway credits include the York Theatre’s On the Twentieth Century, Maury Yeston’s 1-2-3-4-5 at the Manhattan Theatre Club and The High Life and Leave It To Me for Musicals Tonite. As an accomplished classical actress, Barbara’s regional credits include Wings, Tartuffe, Hayfever, Macbett, Irma La Douce, The Philadelphia Story, Much Ado About Nothing, The Foreigner, Vanities, The Sound of Music, The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Not only a theatrical actress, Barbara has had featured roles on television including Kitty in “Courage the Cowardly Dog,” Lynn Moody on “Law and Order, SVU” and Caroline Griffin on “Another World.” More recently, she has starred in two new independent films, “In The Foxhole,” represented at the Boston International Film Festival this June and previously chosen for Virginia’s Top Ten Films in America Festival and the just completed “A Child’s Laugh.”  As a narrator for audio books, she has recorded over fifty titles.

ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM

Tom Jones (Lyricist) and Harvey Schmidt wrote The Fantasticks for a summer theatre at Barnard College. After its Off-Broadway opening in May 1960, it went on to become the longest-running production in the history of the American stage and one of the most frequently produced musicals in the world. It is currently running in a successful revival in New York. Their first Broadway show, 110 In The Shade, was successfully revived a few years ago by the New York City Opera and is scheduled for a new Broadway production this April, produced by the Roundabout Theatre, starring Audra MacDonald. I DO! I DO!, their two character musical starring Mary Martin and Robert Preston, was a success on Broadway and is frequently done around the country and the world. (One production, in Minneapolis, played for twenty-two continuous years with the same two actors in the leading roles.).  For several years, Jones and Schmidt worked privately at their theatre workshop, concentrating on small-scale musicals in new and often untried forms. The most notable of these efforts were Celebration, which moved to Broadway, and Philemon, which won an Outer Critics Circle Award. They contributed incidental music and lyrics to the Off-Broadway play Colette, starring Zoe Caldwell, then later did a full-scale musical version under the title Colette Collage. In 1998, The Show Goes On, a musical revue featuring their theatre songs and starring Jones and Schmidt, was presented at the York Theatre, and Mirette, their musical based on the award-winning children’s book, was premiered at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. In addition to an Obie Award and the 1992 Special Tony Award for The Fantasticks, in 1999 Jones and Schmidt were inducted into the Broadway Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre and on May 3rd of that year, their "stars" were added to the Off-Broadway Walk of Fame outside the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Harvey Schmidt (Music), born in Texas, 1929, is a writer of musical theatre, best known for the longest running musical in history, The Fantasticks, which has been running off-Broadway since 1960.  All of Schmidt's major musicals were written with lyricist Tom Jones whom he met at the University of Texas.  In addition to an Obie Award and the 1992 Special Tony Award for The Fantasticks, in 1999 Jones and Schmidt were inducted into the Broadway Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre and on May 3rd of that year, their "stars" were added to the Off-Broadway Walk of Fame outside the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

WILL MACKENZIE (Director) has received six Emmy nominations for outstanding direction of a television series for such shows as “Scrubs (My Musical),” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “Family Ties,” and “Moonlighting”.  Mr. Mackenzie won the Directors Guild Award for the “Moonlighting” episode Atomic Shakespeare, based on Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew and the one-hour episode of “Family Ties,” titled “My Name is Alex”.  He has directed many other series including “Newhart,” “WKRP in Cincinnati” and “Reba”. On stage, Will directed the critically acclaimed revival of I Do! I Do! in New York City starring Karen Ziemba and David Garrison and the Gershwin musical Funny Face at the Goodspeed Opera House.  In Los Angeles he directed the Reprise! Productions of Finian’s Rainbow with Andrea Marcovicci, The Pajama Game with Christine Ebersol and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for South Bay CLO.  Born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Will graduated from Brown University and received a Fulbright Scholarship to the London Academy of Music and Drama.  As an actor, he appeared on Broadway as Cornelius Hackle in Hello Dolly! starring Carol Channing, Ginger Rogers, Betty Grable and Martha Raye, Half A Sixpence with Tommy Steele and the tours of Promises, Promises and The Apple Tree with his dancing wife of forty years, Patricia Cope Mackenzie.  Will played Larry Bondurant on the original “Bob Newhart Show”, which led to his first directing assignment in television.