Did You Know?: About Musicals at Elmwood

Although we were established as a theatre group in 1947, we didn’t present our first performance until 1948. But it took even longer, until 1954, to do our First ever musical. Where’s Charley? The musical version of Charley’s Aunt opened in August, 1954 at Singer’s Hotel in Spring Valley during our wandering troupe days. Our next musical, Finian’s Rainbow, was in October 1960, which was our First in this building, as Elmwood Playhouse.

Since that year we have performed a musical in every season except three: the first non-musical season was in 1966 (when our theatre had many expenses in order to stay up to Fire Code), and then the Covid seasons of 2019-21. We then resumed in the truncated 2022 season with Songs for a New World, directed by Claudia Stefany.

In total we have performed 86 musical productions, alphabetically from A Funny Thing…Forum to Zorba. This year we look forward to our 87th, Funhome, also directed by Claudia.

Have a Question About Elmwood History? Just Ask Mike!

If you want to know anything about Elmwood’s history, just ask me! I will be sharing more fascinating historical nuggets, statistics and anecdotes each month.