Powerhouse 2023 season revealed: Old favorites and some that 'nobody's heard of'

LACONIA — The 2023 season for the Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative, revealed at a special event on Thursday, includes some of the most well-known titles in theater history, one show that’s never been performed in the state, and nine musicals.

The announcement comes at a time when the community theater organization has one show left in its first full season with shows at both the Colonial Theatre and at the Belknap Mill.

“We felt really happy with how the season worked out,” said Bryan Halperin who, along with his wife, Johanna, runs Powerhouse. There’s still the holiday production of “A Christmas Carol” yet to go, but so far each show has hit or exceeded its minimum ticket sales target, Halperin said, and even more importantly, the feedback received from both cast and audience members has been positive.

“It seems to really mean something for people, which is why we wanted to do this for the community,” he said.

Powerhouse, which is organized as a project of the Belknap Mill, is in the unusual position of having two different performance spaces. The first is its home space, in the third floor of the Belknap Mill, where the unconventional venue gives Powerhouse the chance to do unusual theater projects. Those are sometimes readings of plays or script discussions, or both. These exercises are important to explore the deeper meanings of the art, but which might not draw the crowds necessary to cover the costs of operating a theater.

Then there’s the Colonial, a 700-seat historic and recently renovated space on Main Street, certainly among the best stages in the state. That’s where Powerhouse puts on the shows that have broad appeal.

“The feel of doing a show in the Colonial is really great,” Halperin said. It’s a natural home for big musicals such as “Seussical,” produced this summer, but also manages to offer the intimacy needed for a more nuanced play such as “Almost, Maine,” which just wrapped up its run.

“The audience still feels like they have a connection,” to the actors on stage, he said.

The lineup

The Powerhouse year will start in February with a classic among classics, William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” But this production at the Colonial will be followed by a much more contemporary sequel. “Montague and Capulet,” written by Jaydie Halperin and previously workshopped by Advice to the Players in Sandwich, asks what happens next, after the star-crossed lovers end their own lives.

Where Shakespeare’s tragedy indicts the older generation for sowing fatal division between the two houses, Jaydie’s sequel explores the power of youth to fix the problems inherited from their parents. The play will be read at the Belknap Mill by the same actors who perform at the Colonial.

The rest of the 2023 schedule — full details are available by visiting belknapmill.org/powerhouse-theatre-collaborative — features an April festival of plays written specifically to be performed online; in May, “The Secret Garden,” and then in June a festival of plays written to be performed in a garden; “The Sound of Music” in August, featuring a “fun idea up our sleeves,” Halperin said, which will make this production unique even to those who have seen the play before; “Quilters The Musical” in September and; in October, a musical adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s story “Captains Courageous,” which also inspired a classic 1937 feature film. The holiday season will kick off with a reading of “Too Hot for Santa,” a kid-friendly script written by Halperin and David Polansky, which brings climate change home for the holidays.

“Too Hot” was originally performed at the Winnipesaukee Playhouse 15 years ago. This performance, a reading at the Belknap Mill, has some nostalgic intrigue, as some of the child actors from the 2007 performance are returning as adults for the 2023 production.

The production of “Captains Courageous” is a musical set on a New England fishing boat at a time when traditional sailing vessels began to compete with diesel-powered ships for their catch. It will be the first time this musical has been staged in New Hampshire, Halperin said.

“It’s one of our favorite musicals of all time, and nobody’s seen it and nobody’s heard of it,” he said.

That might be partly due to the challenge of casting. It’s an all-male, 16-person play, with dancing and singing. The Halperins produced it before, in Massachusetts, and feel that they now have a network of enough talented men for the production.

“I really like the story, it’s about fathers and sons,” Halperin said, adding that it makes an impression on the audience. “Having 16 men singing full-out, in four-part harmony, is phenomenal... Nobody does it, so unless I produce it, I don’t get to see it.”