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‘Sugar’ Set to Heat Up Clinton Stage in July

The curtain will rise for the 30th season of the Parks & Recreation family theater on Thursday to Saturday, July 12 to 14 for a performance of the show Sugar at 7 p.m. each night at the Andrews Memorial Auditorium, 54 East Main Street, Clinton.

According to a press release, Sugar is based on the classic film Some Like it Hot, staring Marilyn Monroe. The story “chronicles the zany lives of two musicians” in the Prohibition era who witness gang violence and are forced to disguise themselves as women.

Director John Lampe said the “very silly” humor in the show is great for family audiences, as it “doesn’t poke fun at anyone.”

Lampe, who also directs musicals performed at The Morgan School, said the cast includes 30 kids, all from Clinton.

“The actors are really what makes it,” Lampe said. “My three lead actors are hilarious” and “have a great handle on comedy.”

The theater group first began performing in 1989 and has seen some drastic changes in the decades since that first performance.

“We’ve been around since the summer of 1989, when we presented the musical OLIVER! in the Eliot School cafetorium. It was the end of August, in 100-degree heat, in a venue with no air conditioning, when over 50 kids march around the cafetorium gloriously singing ‘Food Glorious Food,’” Lampe said.

Lampe said the group was the only one of its kind in the area, and during the 1990s would easily get around 100 kids to be in the cast. “The group used to be very inclusive with the whole shoreline,” Lampe said.

However, Lampe said that for the last 10 years the cast has dipped to about 30 to 40 kids annually as more theater groups have started in the area. That decline in cast members isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lampe said that while he enjoyed the big cast performances, he also said that there is now more room physically, and creatively, with a smaller cast.

Lampe said he has directed the show before in other theater ventures and decided to bring it to this group.

“I had a lot of fun with it. Everybody was always laughing,” Lampe said.

Tickets for the show cost $15 and can be obtained by calling 860-669-8449, or by emailing cftheatre@comcast.net.