Talent Machine

The Talent Machine Company presents two musicals during the summer, one featuring a teen cast and another with a younger cast. The current show features cast members 14 and younger in the fairytale musical favorite "Cinderella," which continues at St. John's College's Key Auditorium through Sunday, July 18. Still purring along in its 23rd season and nearly 10 years after the death of founder Bobbi Smith, the Talent Machine continues to reflect her...

Dissed by major critics at its March 2005 Broadway debut, Joe DiPietro's jukebox Elvis Presley musical "All Shook Up" now qualifies as a hit in Annapolis. The Talent Machine Company cast has energy and youthful enthusiasm combined with vocal and dancing skills to create a show brimming with vitality at St. John's College's Key Auditorium. Invited to choose a show for her Talent Machine Company directorial debut, Vicki Sussman suggested "All Shook Up" for "its great Elvis music, its terrific vocal and dance arrangements, and for the wonderful characters who have great heart," she said.

The Talent Machine Company's summer production of Cole Porter's "Can Can," showcasing its 14- to 18-year-old cast members, ran two weekends, Aug. 5 to 14, at St. John's College Key Auditorium. As in past TMC summer shows, this event could be compared to a major talent competition and graduation ceremony for exceptional teens who have become disciplined, polished professionals. Developing raw talent is a Talent Machine tradition dating back to the company's founding in 1987 by Bobbi Smith.

Setting a new high with Cole Porter's "Anything Goes," director Jerry Vess marks his seventh Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre directorial assignment by adding sparkle to the opening of the outdoor theater's 47th season under the stars. Not only has Vess gathered a stellar cast to lend extra zest to Porter's timeless classic, but as set designer he has also created a fabulous tri-level cruise ship SS America complete with realistic smokestacks and portholes. A construction crew of four along with several artist-painters helped Vess.

Dissed by major critics at its March 2005 Broadway debut, Joe DiPietro's jukebox Elvis Presley musical "All Shook Up" now qualifies as a hit in Annapolis. The Talent Machine Company cast has energy and youthful enthusiasm combined with vocal and dancing skills to create a show brimming with vitality at St. John's College's Key Auditorium. Invited to choose a show for her Talent Machine Company directorial debut, Vicki Sussman suggested "All Shook Up" for "its great Elvis music, its terrific vocal and dance arrangements, and for the wonderful characters who have great heart," she said.

In Annapolis, we have theater to set our calendars by. If it's winter, it must be the annual Wade-Gessner version of "A Christmas Carol" at the Annapolis Dinner Theater. And in summer, it's that perennial hot-weather favorite, "The Talent Machine."Director-choreographer Bobbi Smith and her high-kicking youngsters have left their old digs at the Summer Garden Theatre and taken up residence at Key Auditorium on the campus of St. John's College, but otherwise the plot chugs along in familiar fashion.

At the Annapolis Talent Machine Company's performance of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" Tuesday evening, I serendipitously sat next to two of the most talented adult performers on the local circuit. By intermission, the three of us were incredulous."They're unbelievable," said Tim King, a veteran of Colonial Players, the Annapolis Summer Garden Theater and Annapolis Dinner Theater."This is an entire stage full of triple threats," added Eloise Ullman, a talented soprano who has starred in the same venues as Mr. King.

If you've been hearing about "Superstar Express" for several years, but haven't allowed yourself the indulgence of enjoying it, your opportunities are running out.The fabulous production by the Annapolis Talent Machine Company has scheduled its final curtain July 12.There's a month of three-day-a-week performances before that, however, at St. John's College.Director/choreographer Bobbi Smith assures fans that the show isn't resting on its laurels. Each year's production has changed with the talents of new cast members and the developed skills of veterans.

"Talent Machine", the young people's Broadway review presented by the Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre, has become something of a summer ritual in these parts, and the inevitable 1993 incarnation is in production Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the City Dock.In some respects, this year's model has changed little from its predecessors. The plot, centered as it is around a goofy professor who helps kids find theatrical talent they didn't know they had, remains a slender vehicle, and there are some sequences ("Hard Candy Christmas," for example)

We haven't seen any snow yet and very little frost so far this season, but it's time to think cool thoughts. The latest version of the Talent Machine Company's annual variety show, "Frosty Follies 2001," should help. An established Anne Arundel County holiday tradition, the show features a large cast of talented 6- to 17-year-olds performing holidays songs and dances. But for only the second time in its history, the Talent Machine will run without founder and director Bobbi Smith, who died in January.

The Talent Machine Company's summer production of Cole Porter's "Can Can," showcasing its 14- to 18-year-old cast members, ran two weekends, Aug. 5 to 14, at St. John's College Key Auditorium. As in past TMC summer shows, this event could be compared to a major talent competition and graduation ceremony for exceptional teens who have become disciplined, polished professionals. Developing raw talent is a Talent Machine tradition dating back to the company's founding in 1987 by Bobbi Smith.

The Talent Machine Company presents two musicals during the summer, one featuring a teen cast and another with a younger cast. The current show features cast members 14 and younger in the fairytale musical favorite " Cinderella," which continues at St. John's College's Key Auditorium through Sunday, July 18. Still purring along in its 23rd season and nearly 10 years after the death of founder Bobbi Smith, the Talent Machine continues to reflect her...

The Talent Machine Company's July show, The Wiz, a retelling of L. Frank Baum's classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is an excellent vehicle for the skills of the energetic young performers who make up the musical's cast. TMC is a family phenomenon rooted in the traditions of founder Bobbi Smith, who formed the company in 1987 to create a supportive environment for children as young as 5 to participate in polished musical theater performances. After Smith's death in January 2001, her sister, Vicki Smith, and her daughter, Lea Capps, continued the tradition.

The Talent Machine Company didn't look far for the backbone of its new show, Camp Hawyah - The Musical: The entire artistic team consists of company veterans. Director Steve Love adapted it from a show he co-wrote with Jake Thornhill that debuted in summer 2003. Love started at age 8 with the Talent Machine, was a regular in productions through his teen years, then went on to a professional stage career in such venues as Toby's Dinner Theatre. He took on this writing and directing assignment out of devotion to the young performers who wanted to revive the Camp show.

Yes, I know that Barnum, the Cy Coleman musical about to enter its second and final weekend of production by the Talent Machine Company at St. John's College in Annapolis, was a Tony winner that ran for 854 performances on Broadway in the early 1980s. I also know that it can be a colorful show, chock-full of tumblers, clowns, trapeze artists and the like; and that characters such as Tom Thumb, soprano Jenny Lind and the Barnums themselves lend the proceedings a bit of a historical kick.

Hello, Dolly! was a big hit on Broadway in the 1960s, shedding its light on the Great White Way alongside the likes of Mame, Funny Girl and Fiddler on the Roof. But while the latter three get trotted out regularly by theater companies, Dolly's appearances are less frequent. Jerry Herman's musical score, after all, is more modest than the others, and the show's dramatics less riveting. But the story of Dolly Levi, the irrepressible matchmaker who overcomes loneliness and loss to take New York by storm, is a charmer.

Nobody is going to mistake Broadway's version of cartoonist Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner for a classic of the American musical stage. But the characters from Dogpatch, Capp's hillbilly hamlet, are as bright and fun as the show's tuneful 1950s score. When Abner, his ever-loyal Daisy Mae, Mammy and Pappy Yokum, the singing clergyman Marryin' Sam and the rest of the Dogpatchers come together to stomp with high kickin' abandon, the results can be mighty pleasin' indeed. That is assuredly the case at Key Auditorium on the campus of St. John's College in Annapolis, where the Talent Machine has revved into high gear under the direction of Nicole Roblyer and choreographer Vicki Smith.

Youth theater -- The Talent Machine Company will present "Hello Dolly!" at 7:30 p.m. today, tomorrow and July 19, 20, and 21; at 2 p.m. Sunday and July 22; and 6:30 p.m. Sunday at St. John's College, 60 College Ave., Annapolis. This musical will feature children ages 5 to 14. Reservations are suggested. Admission is $10. 410-956-0512 or www.talentmachine.com.