Musical Theater

Cultivate your imagination when Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa., becomes a child's garden of delights filled with activities during its Fabulous Fun Days for Families. Sunday through April 17, entertainment encompassing musical theater, a four-hand piano performance and sing-alongs with children's songwriters is in store to chase away the winter doldrums and welcome the warmth of spring.Fabulous Fun Days spins into action Sunday with two performances of ``Charlotte's Web,'' 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Wilbur is a pig with a problem.

At 95, Kitty Carlisle Hart doesn't exactly have to sing for her supper. Yet, she's doing just that, singing American show tunes and sharing stories about the people in her life, from the Marx Brothers to George Gershwin, in an act she has taken around the country. Now she's bringing, Here's to Life, her tribute to American musical theater (and, of course, to longevity itself) to Olney Theatre, where she will perform on the afternoon of May 14. HERE'S TO LIFE / / One-woman show by Kitty Carlisle Hart / / 4 p.m. May 14 / / Olney Theatre, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney / / $55 / / 301-924-3400 or olneytheatre.

A veteran of musical theater (think Hairspray, hon), Baltimore expands its range this month with a prominent role in a classic, equally well-coiffed comedy. The Young Victorian Theatre Company, devoted to the operatic works of William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, opens its 37th season this weekend with the duo's HMS Pinafore - but this time the audience favorite has a hometown twist. If you go HMS Pinafore runs through July 15 at Bryn Mawr School's Centennial Hall, 109 W. Melrose Ave. in Roland Park.

Auditions seek seven for Dec. productions of `Dickens' comedy The Hanover Little Theatre will hold auditions for the comedy A Dickens' Christmas Carol: A Traveling Travesty in Two Tumultuous Acts at 7 p.m. Oct. 5 and 6 at the theater on Blooming Grove Road (Route 216), Hanover, Pa. The cast includes three men and four women. The show will be directed by Ronald Schloyer. The show follows the antics of Styckes-Upon-Thump Repertory Theater Company, a traveling troupe embarking on its "15th annual farewell tour" of the classic Dickens tale.

The nine youngsters flapped, twirled, and sang songs about bugs and their creepy personalities. In a song about butterflies, one child donned antennae ears to portray a stinky bug, while the other eight children wore floor-length, sheer scarves to portray butterflies. When the music started, they did their best imitations of butterflies fluttering through the air. "I chose the bugs theme because I knew it was something that the kids would really get into," said Joyful Sounds School of Music co-owner Sandy Pietrowicz, who is also piano and voice director.

The Edwin Booth Theater Inc. will present the fun-filled musical "Snoopy" at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 17, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 18, at Harford Day School, 715 Moores Mill Road, Bel Air.Additional performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 23 and 24, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 25.The family show is filled with song, dance and comedy. The show features such favorite cartoon characters as Snoopy, Charlie Brown and his sister Sally, Lucy and Linus Van Pelt, Peppermint Patti and Woodstock.

Over the years, Signature Theatre in Arlington, Va., has built a national reputation for developing new musicals. Now the theater has more to sing about. Last week, Signature received a $1 million grant from the Shen Family Foundation earmarked for the creation and development of three new musicals, which will be produced at the theater over three seasons, beginning in 2007-2008. "Many [donors] would do one musical, but to commit to three musicals and produce them as well as develop them, to have that commitment with one theater is very unique," Signature artistic director Eric Schaeffer said earlier this week.

Madeline Victoria Svec, a retired Westinghouse payroll clerk and musical theater patron, died of a stroke Feb. 22 at St. Elizabeth Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. She was 96. Born in East Baltimore, she was the daughter of Josef Svec, who came to Baltimore from the village of Velešice in what is today's Czech Republic, and his wife, Frances Skrivan. Except for a few years living above her stepfather's business, the Tyc Bakery at Montford Avenue and Madison Street, she lived for 92 years in the home of her birth on North Port Street.

Like his operas and music theater pieces, Marc Blitzstein is more honored in memory than in performance. But without performances, creative artists -- no matter how important and influential -- begin an irreversible slide from obscurity into oblivion.That's one reason to applaud the Baltimore Opera Company's terrific production at the Gordon Center of Blitzstein's "Regina," his 1949 operatic setting of Lillian Hellman's ferocious play, "The Little Foxes." Blitzstein (1905-1964) was one of the most remarkable voices in the history of American musical theater and "Regina" displays easy familiarity with Stravinskyan neo-classicism and Schoenbergian serialism, as well as popular forms, such as Negro spirituals, the blues, jazz and sentimental commercial ballads.