Pow! Zam! Comics Conventions Aren’t for Shitty Highway Hotels Anymore… Focused upon Saturday’s Asbury Park ComicCon is CLIFF GALBRAITH, who joins with Pope of Popculturizm ROBERT BRUCE as promoters of  the city’s firstest-ever scholarly seminar/ swapmeet for the uplift of the sweetly sequential science.

One’s a satanic-bearded solid citizen who birthed unto the world a rodent named Roscoe, and a slew of instantly iconic screenprint ‘Sauruses. The other’s an all-seeing, all-knowing pontiff of Popculturizm; he who is invoked by name when conflicts must be resolved, and spot appraisals rendered.

Together they’re teaming up to fight crime — if by “crime” we mean the near-criminal lack of homegrown Comix Conventions here in the big-tent neighborhood that’s been home to so many comics creatives, not to mention some of the most influential collectors and connoisseurs the artform has ever known.

On this day, May 12, all will be put into perspective, as the first annual Asbury Park Comic Con at the Jersey Shore sets up its folding tables and longboxes inside the only venue that’s surreal enough to contain it — the atom-age retro rec room, tenpins taphouse (and alterna-arts odditorium) that IS Asbury Lanes.

Pencilled in between the hours of 10am and 6pm, the Con is the brainchild of two guys who’ve more than logged their share of hours on the frontlines of our nation’s flea markets, convention centers and drab Days Inn event rooms: Cliff Galbraith, the artist and writer behind RAT BASTARD — and Robert Bruce, the capo di tutti collectibles (and proprietor of the much-missed Groove Spot) who’s parlayed his mastery of the arcane and eldritch into a featured berth on Kevin Smith’s Comic Book Men teevee program.

That Red Bank connection — both Rob and Cliff are residents of the Basie-birthing borough that recently scored third on Smithsonian Magazine’s list of top American small towns for culture (right behind Relocated Bayway and Centralia, PA) — extends as well to the internationally renowned and bracingly branded Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, Lourdes-like grotto for all who make the Askewniverse pilgrimage and base of operations for Mike Zapcic and Ming Chen (who are slated to conduct a live podcast session from the Lanes on Sat afternoon). As for why this event isn’t set to take place in its spiritual homeland of Red Bank, well, more on that in a moment.

Like any Con worth its acid-free backing boards, the Asbury Park affair boasts some amazing guests — among them the dynamically married duo of Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer (creators, both together and solo, of Milk & Cheese, Action Girl, and Supergirl Adventures). The Girl of Steel’s formidable presence extends to the participation of DC superspecialist Jamal Igle, and there’s a welcome injection of beyond-Bizarro World madness from uncategorizable comicker Michael Kupperman. There are also some 35 vendors on board — and as of late last night Galbraith was putting out the BatSignal for more, in the wake of the new Lanes owners having reconfigured/expanded the available floor space.

In one of the most eleventh-hour interview scenarios we’ve ever entered into, we caught up with Cliff Galbraith at the recently relo’d Zebu Forno in RB, even as the earlybird bargainhounds were doubtless suiting up for the trip to our favorite Fellini-esque Fourth Avenue funnarama. More, at the flip of the pulse-poundingly pixelated page…

Guest creators at the first annual Asbury Park Comic Con include (clockwise from top left) Evan Dorkin, Jamal Igle, Michael Kupperman and Sarah Dyer. Also on tap: PBR, plus Steve Mannion, Danny Hellman, COMIC BOOK MEN’s Mike ‘n Ming ‘n more.

upperWETside: Well, the Red Bank comics contingent is certainly present and accounted for at the Comic Con, and you and Robert have really helped to put the town on the map as a regional capital of comics culture…but that kind of begs the question, why aren’t we talking about a Red Bank Comic Con?

CLIFF GALBRAITH: Because there just isn’t an appropriate venue anywhere in town…and because Asbury Park is such a great place to have an event like this.

I’ve been doing conventions for a long time…and I used to be in the clothing business, so I did a lot of clothing shows too…and I’ve seen too many shows that were well run by good people, but they’re in Nowheresville and nobody shows up. The problem with inland shows is you can wind up getting a bunch of vendors, and crickets.

To me the best shows are the coastal ones, the ones in destination towns, where you have places to go and see other than a hotel or convention center. And Asbury Park is a destination town…you’ve got the boardwalk and the beach a block away from the Lanes; all the other shops and restaurants. On Saturday it’s gonna be 80 degrees, the sun will be shining…spring has sprung, right? And they’re gonna line up at the door. We’ve sold out the online admissions, the ones that get to come in when the doors open.

We’ll have more tickets at the door at 11am. Mike and Ming from Secret Stash will be there, doing the podcast from the show, but I should mention that Walt Flanagan won’t be there like we originally announced. He’ll actually be in Red Bank…somebody’s got to run the store!

So how did you settle on the Lanes as your venue of choice?

It was accidental at first…I walked in there when they were doing one of their record fairs; I was watching people go through the boxes of records and I got to thinking, what else do people spend hours looking through boxes for? Comics of course. Rob and I got a price from the Lanes that was very reasonable…and so the journey begins. We started promoting this thing just about a year ago.

And this represents, for both of you, your maiden voyage as a, what, show mogul? Impresario?

Promoter. Like I said, I’ve spent many hours working the shows…I did the San Diego show before it moved to the big convention center; when it was in the old crummy husk of a building. It was really fun; no celebrities, no movie people or anything like that.

I’ve done some of the bigger shows in various cities…it’s how I got to meet people like Evan and Sarah in the first place. They always work these events together, and when they came on board and agreed to do the Asbury Park show, things really started to come together for us at that point.

I saw Stan Lee once, at Hotel Sofitel when the Chicago show was going on…he was in his late seventies then; he’s almost 91 now. He comes out of this restaurant and he’s like…I can only describe it as power walking; just the speed at which he moves…and now, whenever he goes anywhere at all people surround him; they just want to be near him, touch the hem of his garment or whatever.

I know you’ve had some choice observations to make about Stan Lee, especially as regards his relationship with Jack Kirby…maybe someday you and I can make time for a robust debate on this, but I absolutely credit Stan the Man with supercharging interest in comics to what it’s become today. More than anybody, I think he made us all cognizant of the people who made the comic books, and the evolution of something like “Bullpen Bulletins” was every bit as crucial as the introduction of an iconic character…

Sure! And there have been times when he couldn’t even bring himself to mention Kirby; like he couldn’t remember Kirby’s name. But seeing him in action was great, and seeing the way people gravitate toward him…you want to BE him!

Well, it’s probably not a bad time to be Cliff either…between you and Robert, it’s obvious that you guys live and breathe this stuff, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you have in store Saturday. 

We’re looking forward to seeing what’s in store ourselves. Who knows? For me, a comics show is a way for people to get together; to get a gang going and talk about the things that they love. It’s a celebration of the whole culture of comics…the people who go to these shows want it to be Halloween as often as possible.

It’s ‘the Circus comes to town!’ You have COSTUMES, you have FREAKS…and you have your death-defying acts of starting up a business; risking everything you’ve ever had!

Getting back to the San Diego event and what it’s become, it’s a freakshow of a different stripe anymore…it’s like Cannes for the movie business that makes movies people actually pay to see. Now that Hollywood and comics are so inextricably intertwined, do you think we’re fast approaching a saturation point with the comic book blockbusters? Is this like an Ultimate version of the housing bubble?

I don’t know, maybe it’ll all go away as fast as it came along…but for the most part we’re getting what we asked for. We wanted to see it on the screen, and right now. Sometimes it works out, like with Iron Man, and other times like with Green Lantern it doesn’t work so well.

People who don’t read comics, but who go to see these movies, think that comic books are the genre — but superheroes are a genre. Comics are literature. So many other movies have come from comics that people aren’t even aware of the source…Road to Perdition, American Splendor, the Daniel Clowes stuff like Art School Confidential, Ghost World.

One of the problems with the superhero movies is like whenever they do a Superman movie, they feel the need to explain all over again who Superman is, where he came from, who his parents are and all that. Same with Batman. You’d think by now that everyone in the audience is up to date on this stuff. Another problem is that when you deviate the slightest bit from the comic book, you catch shit from the fans — and when you make it as faithful as possible to the comic book, like they did with Watchmen, you get people telling you that it was too much the same as the comic; that there was no reason to pay to see it. So you can’t win a lot of times.

What I don’t get is why they insist on bringing back these outdated characters like The Green Hornet, The Shadow…characters from old radio or pulps, that don’t have any current sort of support or following. The Phantom, especially…what are we supposed to do about this guy, a white guy in the African jungle who wears a little black mask and a purple suit with a zebra stripe belt. Doesn’t he get hot running around like that?

I see a panel discussion on the topic, so hold that thought. And good luck with the one-day event at the Lanes, which I understand is a warmup to a possibly even bigger event in Asbury Park down the road… 

You can never be too far ahead…we’re definitely thinking of expanding the Comic Con to Convention Hall; we want to have 135 vendor tables someday, and we’ve already had two meetings with Madison Marquette. We got a good vibe from them, although they can’t commit right now to a date around this time next year, because of any future Bamboozle Festival. But it’s on to Convention Hall!

Admission to the Asbury Park Comic Con (additional tickets available at the door from 11am) are priced at $4.95, with kids under 12 admitted free of charge when accompanied by an adult. One dollar of each admission will be donated to the Hero Initiative — the nonprofit established to help comic book creators and their families (read up on the subject and you’ll find that many of the folks who created lucrative and long-running properties were “work for hire” freelancers who never shared in the cash-cow royalties and licensing) facing medical expenses and other financial difficulties.

Susan Heyward stars as Winnie, the “nearly nine year old” central character in MY WONDERFUL DAY, the Alan Ayckbourn comedy going up May 15 as the final show of the mainstage season at Two River Theater.

As the author of nearly 80 produced plays, he’s been a magnet for gleaming trophies, plaques and medallions that include the Tony, the Olivier and the Moliere Award, not to mention five honorary doctorates and — what was that other one? Oh yeah, a knighthood.

You’d think then with all of that precious metal clanking about, Sir Alan Ayckbourn would make a healthy amount of noise on this side of the Atlantic — but regrettably, the works of the dramatist best known for theNorman Conquests trilogy and Absurd Person Singular are apparently in no danger of challenging the likes of Nunsense for dominance outside of America’s biggest cities and universities.

Beginning this Tuesday, May 15, Two River Theater Company endeavors to change all that — as indeed they’ve worked to change the standard set of expectations for a “suburban” stage operation — when the professional troupe caps its 2011-2012 mainstage season with a new production of the 2009 comedy My Wonderful Day.

The works of prolific playwright and director Sir Alan Ayckbourn (above) will be the subject of “BeforePlay” lectures prior to each performance of MY WONDERFUL DAY, presented by Ayckbourn expert Michael T. Mooney.

Set in the home of TV personality Kevin Tate (Marc Vietor), Ayckbourn’s farcical look at “the foibles, failed hopes and dreams of the British middle class” unfolds as a series of keenly observed events as experienced through the eyes and ears of “nearly nine year old” Winnie (Susan Heyward), daughter of the Tate household’s Anglo-Caribbean cleaning woman Laverne (Kimberly Hébert Gregory).

It’s young Winnie’s school assignment to take in and record the things that occur around her throughout the day — and take it all in she does, much to the eventual  dismay of the vindictive Mrs. Tate (Danielle Skraastad), Tate’s mistress Tiffany (Alison Cimmet) and Tate’s mate Josh (Kevin Isola).

When My Wonderful Day made its world premiere at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, North Yorkshire (where Ayckbourn served as Artistic Director for nearly 40 years), it featured a quirky bit of casting, in that the vigilant child Winnie was played by then 28 year old Ayesha Antoine. The actress reprised her role when the show jumped the puddle for its Off Broadway run — and, with the casting of the grownup Heyward, TRTC and director Nicholas Martin maintain the recently minted (and entirely unofficial) tradition.

“It’s a fun challenge to play someone that young,” says Heyward of the character who’s onstage throughout the show; a character who gets to read portions of the classic book The Secret Garden, and who delivers some of her dialogue in French (giving some of the other characters the mistaken belief that the child doesn’t understand English).

“You have to let go of your adult opinions, and get rid of all your life experience.”

Describing the nonjudgmental, apparently innocent Winnie as “a bit of a fish out of water” in a household full of liars, philanderers, backstabbers and the just generally clueless, the actress observes that “people tend to talk over her head as if she’s not there…they let down their guard, divulge their secrets, thinking that she won’t really understand. They think they have a Get Out of Jail Free card.”

This is the first Ayckbourn project for Heyward, as well as for most of the young cast, the director AND the Two River team itself — although the company has called in some pretty serious reinforcement for its “BeforePlay” series of presentations in the lobby of TRTC’s branded Bridge Avenue arts center.

Author, playwright, director (and member of the administrative staff at NJ landmark Paper Mill Playhouse), Michael T. Mooney brings a level of Ayckbourn expertise to the table that includes his having founded the 4A’s (Alan Ayckbourn Aficionados of America), and his staging the American premieres of no less than four Ayckbourn plays. Last year, he very nearly presented a local production of the master’s somewhat daunting diptych House and Garden — a pair of full length plays designed to play simultaneously on two neighboring stages, with both the audience and the characters shuttling from one to the other.

“I don’t want to suggest that Ayckbourn’s plays are Too British,” says the Asbury Park resident who traveled overseas to study with Ayckbourn for several summers (and who’s been so bold as to perform in front of the playwright, in a role that Ayckbourn had written for himself).

“The characters in his plays are often well read, cosmopolitan…and the best of his plays are character driven,” says Mooney. “The least of his plays are better than most of other people’s best.”

The sought-after authority on all things Ayckbourn calls the relatively recent and lesser known Day a good choice for TRTC’s maiden voyage; pointing out that the show boasts “a multicultural cast, easy scenery, and it has a very young character at its center…she’s our eyes, our point of view.”

My Wonderful Day previews May 15 through 18; opens on Saturday, May 19 (SOLD OUT), and continues with a schedule of evening and matinee performances, Wednesdays through Sundays until June 3.Tickets are $37 – $57 (with a discounted price of $24 for anyone 30 years and younger) and are available by calling the TRTC Box Office at732.345.1400, or visiting the TRTC website for schedule details and availability — as well as info on dinner/show packages and other special-event performances.

Veterans of Broadway, major awards AND the Two River Theater, Michael Cumpsty (MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING) and Chuck Cooper (IN THIS HOUSE, JITNEY) return to the Red Bank stage in 2013.

“I feel like I’m having a dream,” said the playwright and performance artist Lisa Kron as she faced a capacity crowd at Two River Theater on Monday night.

“In high school, we, the theater people, were like the outcasts…this is the pep rally we never had.”

The occasion for the spirited assembly was the annual new season announcement  by Two River Theater Company — one of the most highly anticipated such events in New Jersey stage circles, and one presided over by John Dias, now in his second season as TRTC’s artistic director.

As introduced by the nationally renowned producer and some celebrated associates, the 2012-2013 schedule builds upon the successful template established in the current 2011-2012 season — a season that climaxes with the production of Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s My Wonderful Day, going up in previews on May 15.

Utilizing both the mainstage Rechnitz auditorium and the “black box” Marion Huber space at TRTC’s branded Bridge Avenue arts center, the new slate of eight shows mixes classics of the English language with new American voices; intimate solos with exquisite ensembles, and new faces with a whole lot of returning favorites — with words from the likes of Noel Coward, August Wilson and a guy by the name of Shakespeare.

Joining Dias on stage were a couple of people new to Two River — Kron (whose Broadway production Well was developed with Dias and director Leigh Silverman), and composer-bandleader Ethan Lipton — as well as a pair of Tony-lauded talents who should be familiar not just to Broadway habitues, but to regular observers of the Red Bank scene.

Presently appearing in End of the Rainbow on Broadway (a show for which he’s received a Tony nomination as Best Featured Actor), Michael Cumpsty previewed his involvement with next year’s Present Laughteras a project that “will bring me back to Red Bank, which is where I want to be…I fell in love with this theater, and with the family at the theater.”

An Obie winner for Hamlet and, with Dias, a resident of Middletown, Cumpsty (who starred for TRTC in 2011′s Much Ado About Nothing, and shared the stage with Alec Baldwin for a fundraiser last November) got laughs for suggesting that his role in the Coward comedy — “an aging matinee idol, who throws everyone around him into a vortex of neurosis” — was brought to him as being “kind of like (my) life.”

Making a big splash with Monday night’s audience was Chuck Cooper, the actor and singer who starred this year in both the “chamber musical”In This House and the Red Bank run of August Wilson’s Jitney. The winner of the 1997 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical (as Memphis, in The Life) will be portraying a different character by the name of Memphis, when he reunites with noted director Ruben Santiago-Hudson and the words of August Wilson for Two Trains Running. Referring to the late African American playwright as “the American Bard” — and calling up the concept of the “blood memory” that unites people of diverse backgrounds — the actor observed that “just like Shakespeare, it takes about a minute to get Wilson’s poetry…you lean into it and you get it. Come to this play and you will remember.”

A high point of the evening was Cooper’s performance of a song from next season’s “family show” presentation, A Wind in the Willows Christmas. The “Americanized” adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s beloved animal characters was composed by the In This Housesongwriting partnership of Mike Reid and Sarah Schlesinger, although  there are, unfortunately, no plans to suit up Cooper as Mr. Toad when the show makes its bow in December.

The 2012-2013 season, for which subscriptions will soon be made available, is as follows:

TOP DOG/ UNDERDOG (September 8-30, 2012). In 2002, Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for this tale of two brothers, a game of Three Card Monte, and the shared past that can’t be escaped. On the tenth anniversary of this theatrical milestone, Dias and TRTC managing director Michael Hurst return to the play that they helped develop in its premiere at NYC’s Public Theater, with the playwright herself as director.

NO PLACE TO GO (October 6 – November 4, 2012). The quirky, retro-rocketing music of Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra is front and center for this “irreverent, deeply compassionate musical ode to America’s work force,” a lament for a longtime employee whose company has announced that it’s moving to another planet. TRTC Associate ArtistLeigh Silverman (who directed Lisa Kron in Well) takes the helm for this premiere inside the Marion Huber Theater.

HENRY V (October 20 – November 11, 2012). William Shakespeare’s supercharged history of a gung-ho young king and the costs of living in a perpetual state of war — the play that gave us the rousing exhortation “Once more unto the breach” — is staged by Michael Sexton of The Shakespeare Society, with a cast featuring “some of New York’s most accomplished young Shakespearean actors.”

A WIND IN THE WILLOWS CHRISTMAS (December 8-30, 2012). In TRTC’s annual holiday presentation for family audiences, Grammy winning Nashville songsmith and recording artist (plus ex-NFL defensive tackle) Mike Reid reteams with Sarah Schlesinger for a new take on the adventures of Mr. Toad, Mr. Badger, Mole and company, while director Amanda Dehnert makes a long-awaited Red Bank debut.

PRESENT LAUGHTER (February 16 – March 10, 2013). Two River Theater Company visits the works of Noel Coward for the third time (following Blithe Spirit and Private Lives) with this witty and sophisticated “valentine to the theater,” in which Cumpsty stars as the debonair leading man Gary Essendine. A director will be announced later this year.

THE ELECTRIC BABY (April 6 – May 5, 2013). For their next world premiere project inside the Marion Huber space, the TRTC team welcomes playwright Stephanie Zadravec for this adult drama about the way we form families — a story in which “a group of lost souls are brought together by accident, and form unlikely connections that will change all of their lives.” May Adrales (In This House) directs.

2.5 MINUTE RIDE (April 20 – May 12, 2013). Performing this monologue piece for the first time in about ten years, author and storyteller Lisa Kron spins a moving and funny autobiographical story that centers on her relationship with her Holocaust survivor father — an Obie-nominated whirlwind tour that careens from concentration camp to amusement park rollercoaster ride. Mark Brokaw (Broadway’s The Lyons) directs.

August Wilson’s TWO TRAINS RUNNING (June 1-23, 2013). Continuing their exploration of Wilson’s epic “Pittsburgh Cycle” that began with this season’s Jitney (and bringing back Chuck Cooper as well as Tony winning actor, director and “first generation Wilsonian” Ruben Santiago-Hudson), TRTC advances into Summer’s heat with this ensemble drama set in the riot-scarred urban landscape of the 1960s; a crucial component of a project that Dias calls “one of the greatest chronicles of a people and a time…one of the greatest works of art ever.”

Take it here for individual tickets to the upcoming production of My Wonderful Day, as well as an “Intimate Evening With…” series of star-quality music concerts at Two River Theater. Check in for updates on other summertime events at Bridge Ave, including the second annualCrossing Borders festival, Joe Muccioli’s Summer Jazz Series and the BOLERO Red Bank dance project — about all of which more to come in the paperless pages of upperWETside.

John Paul Tremblay (“Julian”), Mike Smith (“Bubbles”) and Robb Wells (“Ricky”) are The Trailer Park Boys, the Canadian cult cable sensations performing a bit of “community service” this Friday night at the Count Basie Theatre.

The last time the world heard from the Trailer Park Boys, the trio of petty criminals, backsliding lowlifes and substance abusers was more or less secured within their natural habitat — behind bars, and lashing out against the media attention that helped make their mugshots a household brand in dozens of countries.

It was a fitting valedictory for “Julian” (John Paul Tremblay), “Ricky” (Robb Wells) and “Bubbles” (Mike Smith), the characters who evolved (so to speak) from several low-budget film projects by Canadian writer and director Mike Clattenburg.

Dedicated to the mantra “get rich, get high, and stay out of jail;” navigating life at Nova Scotia’s Sunnyvale Trailer Park with a work ethic, a moral code and an F-bombed vocabulary that made our own Jay and Silent Bob look like Frasier and Niles, the Boys spent seven seasons as the stars of their own “mockumentary” TV series — an international cult hit seen Stateside by DirecTV subscribers.

The series that ended in 2008 — think COPS times Sunny divided by The Office — gave noisy birth to two theatrically released feature films, an all new TV vehicle for the three actors (The Drunk and On Drugs Happy Fun Hour), and several live appearance tours, the latest of which rolls into Red Bank’s Count Basie Theatre this Friday night, May 11.

Subtitled The Ricky, Julian and Bubbles’ Community Service Variety Show, the stage presentation ostensibly springs the three recidivist jailbirds for an evening of court-ordered lecturing on the evils of drinking and drug abuse — an edu-taining interlude in which Bubbles gets to perform his ventriloquism act (and sing his signature anthem “Liquor and Whores”) while the other guys do their best to involve the audience and send the whole thing careening off the rails.

UpperWETside spoke to Julian and Ricky — yes, in character, and while riding in a luxuriously appointed tour bus that’s a far cry from the various trailers, sheds, beater Chryslers and jail cells they’ve inhabited over the years.

upperWETside: So how sweet is it playing these fancy theaters, riding on a rockstar tour bus, and attaching all sorts of contract riders about your dressing room accommodations?

RICKY: Oh, we’re lovin’ it. Just livin’ the dream. But the only riders we have are like clean socks and underwear…Julian really screwed up our contracts.

JULIAN: Ricky’s the one who screwed up…that’s how we went back to jail. Bubbles started cryin’ on the stand, begging the judge for mercy, and that’s how this whole Community Service thing came about.

This is probably your biggest American jaunt yet, you’re hitting a lot of places like Boston and other cities in the northeast, and since you’re seeing so much of the country in style I wonder if you have any thoughts as to what you love and hate the most about the US of A…

JULIAN: Hate the toll booths! We’ve been shellin’ out of our own pocket for all these tolls and gassin’ up the bus…

RICKY: I love the food though…especially Bar-B-Q.

I’m sure it sucks being forced into this tour, having to lecture on the evils of drugs and alcohol…but still, it’s got to be better than prison by this point.

JULIAN: Yeah, but it’s kind of a drag. We sometimes don’t feel like entertaining…fortunately, everybody in the audience likes to get drunk and get high.

Well, at the end of the COUNTDOWN TO LIQUOR DAY movie in 2009, you guys were getting really pissed off with the camera crews; knocking the camera out of their hands and everything. It’s as if you were tired of being public figures, and preferred to retire to a life of quiet dignity and contemplation…

RICKY: Julian likes being famous, but I never liked having the cameras follow me around. Those camera dicks were always makin’ me look bad. The clips they show make me look fuckin’ stupid.

But it also made you an international star. And you gotta admit it was funny.

JULIAN: It wasn’t that funny for us, all the things we had to go through. Our lives were not really like what you saw on TV. We always wound up payin’ the price, and we signed off on a lot of rights too. The worst part is that they would use the camera footage as evidence against us.

That does kind of beg the question, how could you guys ever expect to get away with most of the shit that you were involved with, knowing that it was all going to wind up on national TV?

JULIAN: When we started, we thought we were really gonna be able to tell our own story…y’know, COPS from the criminal’s point of view.

Even so, that fame and recognition has to carry some sort of advantages…

RICKY: Well, yeah, we get extra desserts from people and everything…and I wouldn’t be gettin’ banged as much. But I’d still be happy.

Alright, so assuming that someday you guys are able to get a new contract, work off all that community service, take control of your careers for the first time, what would you do differently? How would you merchandise your brand?

RICKY: We’d probably make our own rolling papers, bobbleheads…I’d have my own line of cigarettes.

JULIAN: I think we’d do our own Western movie. Like a Clint Eastwood picture. And Bubbles would want to do sci fi.

Tell us about the Variety Show that we’ll be seeing at the Count Basie Theatre. What kind of enlightening, positive message will you be exploring?

JULIAN: It’s a good way to knock two hours off our community service…where we kind of go off the rails, get to be drunk and high onstage. We make sure the crowd has a good time…we have a lot of games and contests where we get the audience involved, bring ‘em up and make ‘em do the work.

So you’d say it was an educational sort of presentation. But why is it being performed to a bunch of drunk adults in a theater instead of in front of kids at a school? Are you trusting the adults to kind of “trickle down” the message to the kids when they get home? 

JULIAN: They probably wouldn’t remember anything that happened after it’s over. We hypnotize them so they don’t remember any of it the next day.

Well, around here we have our own pockets of trailer park culture to be sure…those of us who grew up in a Sunnyvale kind of environment know that there’s a deep and abiding truth behind the comedy. But do you really mean to tell us that you wouldn’t change a thing if you had half a chance?

RICKY: Living in a trailer park is like goin’ campin’ every day. We would never buy fancy houses; that’d be stupid…even if we had money, we would still live in a trailer.

Tickets ($24.50 – $35) for Friday’s 8 pm performance of The Ricky, Julian and Bubbles’ Community Service Variety Show can be purchased from the Basie box office right here.

Hello, Lloyd: One of the biggest events of the Whole Kid Year returns to Asbury town this weekend, when madcap mogul Lloyd Kaufman brings the TROMADANCE Festival back to the center Lanes for TWO big nights, May 4 and 5!

The MayDay claxon’s already sounded; things are getting tensely tight around Asbury Parque (and by extension, the Upper Wet Side) in anticipation of the blizzardlike blitzkrieg that is the Bamboozle Fest — a wristband Woodstock that not only corrals “the kids” for three days and nights within a space where people actually sorta/kinda live, but THIS year invites their fiftysomething parents to stay and do something other than idle in queue at the designated pickup/dropoff areas. More on THAT as it happens midmonth — for now the pace picks up considerably in and around the place Where Music Lollygags, and if you dare to stray from the clearly demarcated Festival Area you’re SURE to find something weirdly wonderful…

FRIDAY and SATURDAY! 13th Annual TromaDance Festival at Asbury Lanes. You don’t have to be a conventioneering connoisseur of the Troma Films brand to have a blast at this yearly freewheeling filmfest, but it helps to enter into the bargain with some working knowledge of the MegaLoBudget sleaze cinema “studio” that gave the world The Toxic Avenger (plus associated kid cartoons, sequels and Off Broadway musicals) — a brand that continues to survive, maybe thrive, in a climate where the Drive Ins, the home video market, and even FILM as we know it have effectively joined the body count of motion picture arts and sciences.

Originally kickstarted in Park City, Utah as a freebie flip-off to the corporate-indie Sundance suckfest, TromaDance returns in its 13th annual edition to the atom-age Asbury Lanes this Friday and Saturday (May 4-5), with that most Fellini-esque of neighborhood rockbars playing host for the fourth(?) time to a no-charge, “No VIP” event in which “celebrities and fans are treated equally.” Lording over the affair once more is that Disney of Disturbia, that David O. Sleazenik, that Louis B. Mayhem mogul of madness — Troma chief, producer, director and sometime actor Lloyd Kaufman.

Some three dozen shorts from filmmakers all over the world (none of whom need to pay an entry fee) will be screening over the course of the weekend, with each night also spotlighting a new feature-length fracas. Friday’s full-lengther will be Manborg, a “cult-tastic throwback to 80s sci-fi action films like ROBOCOP and THE TERMINATOR” from Steven Kostanski and the Astron-6 Video collective — in which “a soldier, brought back to life as a cyborg, fights alongside a band of adventurers against demon hordes in a dystopian future.”

That latest from the director of Father’s Day will show at 8pm on May 4 (program starts at 7pm) — and at that same hour on Saturday, it’s a free screening of The FP, a grindhouse gangbang co-directed by the sibling tagteam of Jason and Brandon Trost, the amped-up cinematographers behind the likes of Crank: High Voltage and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Brother Jason stars in this story of “two gangs locked in a turf war in rural wasteland Frasier Park, in the deadly arena of competitive dance-fight video game” — a “fury of fierce footwork, triumphant montages and neon street wear” that features as narrator none other than James Remar of The Warriors (and, lately, Dexter). Take it here for Dorothy Creamer’s interview with Yale alumnus (and former GWB classmate) Kaufman, conducted for our old Red Bank oRBit site and archived for your enlightenment here on the upperWETside. Asbury Lanes, Fourth Ave., Asbury Park • 7pm/ FREE!                                                                                                                                                                                                

That ain’t even the one-sixth of it; flip the record over for more…

Anarchy in the BK: Some of the most instantly familiar images captured by ace rock photographer Bob Gruen (including this shot of The Sex Pistols on their fateful American tour) are on display — with the man himself in person — with Friday’s opening of a new show at Art629 in Asbury Park.

FRIDAY! Bob Gruen ROCK SEEN at Art629. Nineteen Ninety Nine. Has it really been that long since the Upper Wet Side saw a solo-show exhibit dedicated to the wowsome work of Bob Gruen? Back on the cusp of the hopeful new millennium,  this rock photographer’s rock photographer — a man of whom it can be said has captured many of THE most iconic, most viewed images of Led Zep, John/ Yoko, The Sex Pistols and countless others — gave local crowds an up-close gawk at a largely bygone world in which the Rock Star strutted tall, during an installation at the long-gone ArtForms gallery in Red Bank.

Beginning with an opening reception this Friday night — an event for which the lensman promises to be present, as he was during a private event at The Showroom this past Tuesday — an array of Gruen’s most instantly recognizable (and infinitely resonating) images will adorn the walls of Art629 Gallery, the downtown Asbury Park artspace established by painter, promoter (and former booking guy at the late lamented Club Bene!) Patrick Schiavino. It’s a smorgasbord of snaps that include such Gruen milestones as “Sid Vicious with Hot Dog” (now in London’s National Portrait Gallery), scenes of The Clash @ Convention Hall in 1982, Jon Bon Jovi at the boundary-busting 1989 Moscow Music Peace Festival — and still more from the man behind John and Yoko’s volume Sometime in New York City, and not one but two seminal documentaries on the New York Dolls.

For us, though, Gruen’s rep was staked on his long tenure as a staff or stringer photographer for vintage magazines like the amazing Creem or the much-missed Rock Scene — alternatives to the eternally stodgy and clueless Rolling Stone that telegraphed tomorrow’s trends (and chronicled a golden age of epic excess) largely through the candid, unorchestrated, often way out of control portraits by this man who preferred to stay out of the limelight himself.

None of which is to suggest that there’s not a great book in all of this — and last year’s publication of the Gruen collection Rock Seen led directly to the installation at Art629, an exhibit that remains on display, most all this merry month of Bamboozle, during normal gallery hours through May 27. Art629 Gallery, 629 Cookman Ave., Asbury Park • 8-10pm 

Help Yourself: Asbury Park hip hop hope Solo For Dolo takes the Press Room stage for the first time on First Saturday, in a record release party for his new SELF TITLED, that’s also part of a three-way Bangs Ave block party benefit for the nonprofit Mad vs Cancer. 

SATURDAY! MAD VS. CANCER benefit on Bangs Avenue. Corpspeak types would brand it “synergy,” but when the monthly First Saturday slate of activities returns to downtown AP this Cinco de Mayo, it’ll feature a subset event in which a threesome of relative recent arrivals on a banging stretch of Bangs Avenue band together in cahoots for a tri-pronged fundraising effort to benefit MAD vs. CANCER.

It’s an endeavor that’s keyed to the big Two Year Anniversary at ReBearth Artist Boutique, a genuine pioneer/ pacesetter on the fast-transforming easternmost blocks of Bangs, and a center of city life in which 10% of all sales this Saturday will be dedicated to the ongoing battle against what the Vegas hipsters used to call The Big Casino. Down the street at the new Bangs Art Gallery, proprietor (and proponent of Spraypaint SurrealiZm) Doug Z presents Ocean Spray, an International Graffiti Exhibition that showcases the work of such Rustoleum Rembrandts (and Krylon Klimts) as KAVES, NASTY, ENUE, MARS, KR ONE, SAMP, VERS, DEALYT, DEZO, AIR 3, MONOVISUA, SKOPE, YES 2, CES, and SLICE. The reception runs from 6pm all the way to midnight, with art sale proceeds to MAD and live painting demos (“prepare to have your mind blown”) for the duration.

“Rest in peace to the Moon Rock and the places we’d skate,” declares hip hop artiste (and Asbury Park original) Solo for Dolo on “Asbury Rising,” one of the tracks on his brand new longplayer Self Titled. “Shout to the ReBearth for the cans I spray.” The word-dense lament for a transitioning hometown that’s sold off pieces of its soul (“Way back when Kingsley was strip clubs and bars, before it got revamped and they censored out every part”) is one of several standouts on the new release, an effort that shows a still-defiant but increasingly reflective S4D shaking off some of his residual teenpunk angst as both he and the city enter into a new evolutionary phase.

The Self Titled (not self-titled) album is the center of attention during a Saturday night record release event at yet another welcome new arrival on Bangs Ave — The Press Room, the Bruce-blessed destination rockbar co-owned by Alecia Brooks. Shoreshot and Fresh Vets join Solo for Dolo in the live show that kicks off at 10pm, with proceeds from the recession-busting Press Room cover charge of $5 going once again to the evening’s MAD vs CANCER fund drive. The Press Room, 610 Bangs Ave., Asbury Park • 10pm/ $5

Elsewhere on and around the Cookman Avenue corridor on First Saturday, the sporty and luxurious Doug Ferrari‘s relocated/ reborn Shore Institute Of The Contemporary Arts hosts an opening reception for the sixth annual edition of SICA’s High Relief event, a group show highlighting the best high school sculptors in NJ — “those who demonstrate not only technical achievement in the handling of their material but that essential creativity which demonstrates the spirit of contemporary art today.” Winners of the competition will be announced during the reception running between 6 and 10pm, with the exhibit continuing through May 25 and selected entries considered for inclusion in SICA’s annual SculpToure Urban Sculpture Park (about which more to come in these pixelated pages).

Over at The Paint Place, designer and fashion expert Brittany Guba  shows off “her new creation Beautiful Havoc, the most wonderful watch ever” — while the characteristically amazing group show Strange Matter continues at Pop Art paradise Parlor Gallery, with eye-popping “wearable art and art created with unusual materials” by Morris Jurgensen, Ray Geary, Joe Iurato, Betsy van Langen, Miss Ellie, Tina Kerekes, Mike Leavitt, Hey Sailor, Blood Milk, Matthew Cox, Roxie Darling, Kim Alsbrooks, C. Pazia Mannella, Hannah Fink, Ben Conrad & Vahge. And at John Vigg’s Gallery 13 (inside the downtown Shoppes at the Arcade), you’ve got another chance to view a Ring-A-Ding-Ding collection of 1950s-60s images featuring Frank Sinatra and the people in his swaggering Rat Pack orbit, from the Kennedys to Dino and Sammy. It’s a pretty astounding assemblage of shots, many of them completely unfamiliar and at least one of them showing a toupee-less Ol’ Blue Eyes in an unguarded moment.

Don Dazzo and The Whirling Dervishes — pictured here in their 1980s heyday, forever on the threshold of breakthrough greatness — reunite for a salute to the long-gone rockbar The Green Parrot, this Saturday at the (still alive and kicking) Brighton Bar.

SATURDAY! Green Parrot Reunion at The Brighton Bar. As put-upon readers of this blog surely guessed by now, we’ve been around this scene for some time longer than the one year or so that upperWETside has been live — in fact, we can trace our pathetic pedigree to a rag called Pipeline, a bi-weekly newsprint music/ entertainment zine (covering South Amboy down to Seaside) that we published in the early to mid 1980s. So humor us as we spin a tale of a classic Shore nightspot of yore — no, not the Upstage, Student Prince or any of those can’t-go-home-again SOAPboxes from a bronzed era of skinny Springsteens and fat facial hair.

No, we’re referring to The Green Parrot, which for a relatively brief time in the 1980s served as a real-world annex to the Modern Rock airwave action put forth by the old WHTG-FM. Located a short world away from Asbury out on Route 33 in Neptune (the building was razed in the early 1990s for additional parking space at Jersey Shore Medical Center), the bar served as the scene of some memorable sets by alt-rock faves like Nine Inch Nails, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lenny Kravitz, Living Colour, Faith No More, The Fleshtones, The Feelies — and a whole lot of local alterna-bands, a fistful of whom re-assemble like Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (with the ostensible blessings of the Yaccarino family) for a Reunion Party this Saturday night, Mayo the Cinco.

With the Parrot having squawked its last more than 20 years ago, the action moves to another landmark latespot of the 1980s — West End’s Brighton Bar, a crucial crossroads in the history of the Shore underground and a place that if anything is still vitally hallowed ground to this day. Saturday’s bill is a thrilling one for geezers like us who covered the waterfront back in the day when we Wanted Our MTV — a bill that boasts The X-Men (fronted by Brighton co-owner Greg Macolino), Westfield sensations The Whirling Dervishes (of “Mr. Grinch,” some fantastic EPs and the jaw-dropping movie Thin Mints), the underrated Well of Souls, and The Wallbangers, a very groovy band that we never thought we’d see again.

All of these combos are coincidentally represented on the Brighton’s must-see Wall of Fame (making this a circa-1985 Brighton reunion as much as a Parrot bash); doors open at 8pm and below-radar history continues to be made at the Home of the Frosted Mug. Brighton Bar, 121 Brighton Ave., Long Branch • doors 8pm/ $7  

Laying down some tracks: to state THE OBVIOUS, one of the better bands on the fractured and fragmented Wetside scene is having a Record Release Party tonight; just one of many goings-on we can pretty much experience from our front porch this weekend.

3pm Wednesday April 25, and we’re getting a whiff of nostalgia in and around Asbury’s Convention Hall — if you call circa 1990 your idea of nostalgia. Not a blamed or blessed soul in sight within the Grand Arcade; no shops open; a clear cannonball shot both north AND south of here on the boards. Even the gulls and pigeons have gone off to scout other fastfood pastures.

This momentary snapshot was well out of date by the weekend, of course, and we offer it up only as a final echo of the Off Season That Wuz (within the Winter That Wun’t) here on the cuspidor of the summer-season corridor. It’s a season that was more or less heralded by the beauty-sleep-disturbing blare of a marching band on the morning of April 27; a neighborhood drumline blast that assembled to welcome the flyby of the retired Space Shuttle with a somehow appropriate quote from Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2.”

From here on in around these blocks by the beach and boards, it’s time to batten down the hatches for Bamboozle’s burb-oid blizzard; to convert front lawns into parking lots and psych ourselves into a sleepless, senses-working-overtime parsing of the passing parade. It all starts NOW, with…

SATURDAY! Record release party for THE OBVIOUS at Asbury Lanes. Only those who are downright oblivious could develop an immunity to the charms of The Obvious, the greater Asbury punkpop combo that’s been helping to keep the electric garage door open in a landscape of acoustica Americana “authentica” and songer/singwriter narcissimo. Fronted by the ravishing Surojanie “Angie” Sugrim, the four-piece 2012 edition of the band that was last seen backing original Sugar Hill Gang old-schooler Wonder Mike at last month’s Garden State Film Festival has a new EP to peddle (Maybe She’s Bored With It) and a place to peddle it, tonight at the everlovin’ Asbury Lanes.

Produced by Bouncing Souls guitarist Pete “The Pete” Steinkopf at the Bouncing boys’ secret clubhouse recording studio in Asbury Park (on the same street as the groovy grotto where we peck out this blogfest), the record will be the centerpiece of an evening in which Angie and company are joined by a most solid lineup that further boasts Chemtrail, Lost in Society and Give Me Static — with admission a measly five bucks, there in the retro rec room and alterna-arts odditorium that hosted another high-artistic-value session by Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School on that selfsame afternoon. Asbury Lanes, Fourth Ave., Asbury Park • 8pm/ $5

There’s more in store within upperWETside’s home neighborhood this weekend, and “It’s All Within Reach” (one of many failed promo campaigns from the much-maligned Gannett media octopus) with the flip of a pixelated page…

SATURDAY! Asbury Park Musical Memories at the Berkeley. A collaboration between filmmaker Susan Pellegrini‘s synergy productions with Monmouth University and Asbury Park High School, the documentary feature Asbury Park Musical Memories is screened as the centerpiece of an official launch event for the new nonprofit org Asbury Park Musical Heritage Foundation. We had occasion to see part of this ambitious oral-history project during the aforementioned Garden State Film Festival, and it’s an engaging chronicle of several decades in the life of the city Where Music Lives (and laughs, and loves) — from the expected Springsteen-Pony-Upstage yadda, to an edu-taining exploration of the Springwood Ave R&B scene that had been all but swept under the rug for a generation.

A project that pretty much assumed a life of its own in the wake of 2011′s Where Music Lives campaign (itself spurred into being by Asbury’s selection as host city for a touring Smithsonian exhibit), the doc shows at 8pm inside the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel (following a brief ceremony with Pellegrini and Asbury’s Minister of Good Times Tom Gilmour), with a “Meet & Greet with the musicians” after-party at 9:30 inside the hotel’s own Dauphin Grill restaurant. Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel, 1401 Ocean Ave. at Sixth Ave., Asbury Park • 7:45pm/ FREE with ticket

SATURDAY! Jersey Shore Roller Girls at Convention Hall. The fast-track, flat-track rollerderby action returns to the space above the briny surf, as the Jersey Shore Roller Girls AllStars meet the PRG Block Party (the exhibition unit of the phar-phamed Philly Roller Girls) in a high profile milestone for the fast-growing JSRG brand. It’s all ages (21 to drink, natch), with discounts for kids 10 and under or active military, and tix available here or from your favorite local Roller. A portion of proceeds benefit the Animal Welfare Committee of Point Pleasant Borough— and don’t forget to keep your wristband for entry to an After Party across the street at the Wonder Bar, following the match. Convention Hall, Ocean and Fifth Aves., Asbury Park • 8pm/ $20 ($15 military; $10 kids under 11)

SUNDAY! Asbury Park Restaurant Tour. Hard to believe this is the first-ever such culinary tour event here in what’s fast become a destination town for dining, but the best part is that you never forget your first time — and for four hours this April 29, the Asbury Park Chamber of Commerce offers up a strolling smorgasbord made up of some 25 bistros, boites, bakeries, beaneries and (juice/coffee) bars within city limits. They’ll be serving up “small bites and one-of-a-kind sampling experiences” to the epicurious, with a $30 wristband (limited quantity still available day of event from the C of C Visitor Trailer at Press Plaza) allowing access as well as free shuttle transport to and fro and thereabouts. The Chamber will also furnish “a tasting guide and map of participating sites as well as offers from local merchants,” and will be awarding prize packages that include an Asbury Park Seasonal beach badge “and other fun surprises to ‘Top Tasters’.” Take it here for a full rundown of participating parties. Locations around Asbury Park Boardwalk, Cookman Avenue and Main Street • 12-4pm/ $30 wristband

SUNDAY! Bettina May Pin Up Class at Asbury Lanes. Back down the street to everyone’s favorite Alternative to the Alternative, as Asbury Lanes welcomes a return visit from Burlesque babe, blogger and boudoir-art bombshell Bettina May. An authority in the art ad science of the vintage “pin-up” photography of the Bettie Page/ Irving Klaw era, the Canadian coquette will be once again conducting an afternoon seminar in hair, makeup and posing techniques, with a CD of your professional quality va-va-voom sitting session ready to take home for more fun and adventure. Take it here to register online, or sign up for encore sessions on May 27 and June 10. Asbury Lanes, Fourth Ave., Asbury Park • 12:30 – 6:30pm/ $195 to participate in full session; $50 to observe hair/makeup demos

SUNDAY! The 2012 JAM Awards at Atonement Church. It’s just the second annual edition for the Jersey Acoustic Music Awards, but within a remarkably short timeframe this loose and lively consortium of unplugged songpluggers has managed to put a significant stamp upon the live music scene within Asbury town and assorted points up and down the Upper Wet Side of NJ. This Sunday evening, the auditorium of Atonement Lutheran Church is the red-carpet setting for a night of performance and applause that caps off an ambitious online voting campaign. Many of this site’s favorite local performers — including George Wirth, Mike Patrick, The Wag and Jon Caspi (pictured above in a shot by Brenda Wirth) himself nominated for Male Performer, Male Vocalist, Top Pop AND Best Song — will be on hand entertaining, presenting and keeping their best game poker faces as they rip open the envelope puh-leez. All guests are encouraged to bring nonperishable food items, which will be donated to the Church’s food bank as well as to the charities of Musicians on a Mission. Atonement Lutheran Church, 308 First Ave. (at Heck St.), Asbury Park • 4pm doors/ $10 (includes drinks and dinner)

Original Broadway cast members of RENT, Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp perform both solo and in tandem in a Saturday night concert event at Monmouth University. 

We spoke of many things — of baseball (esp. the Cubs and the Mets) and Spider-Man; of a band named XTC, and what it’s like to have a father in law who won the Nobel Prize. We even found a few moments to speak of a little phenom called Rent.

Illinois native Anthony Rapp was already a seasoned veteran of the stage (at age ten, he played the title role in the ill-fated musical The Little Prince) and screen (Adventures in Babysitting, Dazed and Confused) — and Adam Pascal was a native New Yorker whose only stage experience was in fronting a band called Mute — when the two became castmates (and their characters became roommates) in a show that did nothing less than change the face of latter-day Broadway.

Set in the once-forgotten but fast-transitioning landscape of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the AIDS-ravaged 1980s, Jonathan Larson’s magnum opus borrowed the framework of Puccini’s La Boheme for a production that would win a fistful of Tonys AND a Pulitzer (not to mention a whole new generation of diehard Rentheads), fueled by real grass-roots buzz and the mind-bogglingly sudden death of its creator on the eve of the show’s first preview.

In the original cast of the 1996 Off Broadway premiere and its Broadway incarnation later that same year — a cast that also boasted Idina Menzel, Taye Diggs and Law & Order‘s Jesse L. Martin — Pascal played Roger Davis, the HIV-positive musician, with Rapp as Mark Cohen, Roger’s filmmaker friend and roomie (the two roles were riffs on Boheme‘s Rodolfo and Marcello).

The actors would eventually go their own ways — Anthony would come out and advocate tirelessly for LGBT rights, while Adam would “marry up” and form a partnership with playwright and superstar cookbook author Cybele Pascal (prominent in the food allergy community, and daughter to the Nobel-winning Eric Chivian). And, while the show would launch the Broadway careers of the two young stars in earnest (Pascal would play lead roles in the Elton John-Tim Rice Aida, in David (Bon Jovi) Bryan’s Memphis, and in the 1998 revival of Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret; Rapp would essay the title role in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown), it would also draw the Adam & Anthony team back together for the 2005 film version, and a 2009 tour.

On Saturday night, April 21, the colleagues reunite once more, in a concert presented under the name Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp: Original Stars of Broadway’s RENT — a touring production that comes to Monmouth University‘s Pollak Theatre for one 8pm show.

The three-part program is set to kick off with Pascal performing with his three-piece combo “Me & Larry,” a project that finds the singer adding his powerhouse vocals (as well as his underrated guitar and bass skills) to pianist Larry Edoff’s bold sound in a set that draws from their album Blinding Light, with some eye-opening new takes on some familiar showtune standards, to boot.

Rapp, who documented his own voyage through life and Rent in his memoir Without You, will be performing a mix of savvy originals and surprising covers with his own five piece band — and the two co-headliners team up again for the concert’s climactic segment, an interlude in which the stars share stories and signature songs from that most game-changing (and career-defining) of shows.

UpperWETside spoke to Adam and Anthony separately, and in that order. What follows is a merry mashup of those back-to-back phone conversations.

upperWETside: So what kind of a format can we expect to see at the Monmouth show? Do you guys perform separate sets and duet at the end, or are you both onstage throughout?

ADAM PASCAL: My set comes first, then Anthony does a song with me, which leads into his set…then I come out again for the last segment. We were toying around with this sort of set-up after the 2009 tour; I asked him to combine forces.

ANTHONY RAPP: Adam goes on first because his set-up’s simpler…my sound’s bigger, so it made more sense for me to go on second. I do a song with him between our sets, so we have that tag-team thing going.

Adam, I gotta say that your Me & Larry project really has a sound all its own…it’s a pretty refreshing alternative to the way other people continue to approach Songbook-type material; you know, So-and-So Sings Gershwin, with the Hi-Fructose Corn Syrup Orchestra. Since I’m pretty unfamiliar with Larry’s work, clue us in on how your collaboration came together…

ADAM: Well, Larry’s an amazing writer and producer and musician, who’s got a successful music teaching business in Westchester County. We met when I lived there; at the Equinox gym in Scarsdale. We exchanged albums, and got to talking!

I grew up as the singer of a five piece rock group, and I guess I grew out of it, or at least wanted to explore something a little bit different.

Well, I was very impressed by what you guys did with “Maria” from WEST SIDE STORY. Especially since I have to admit that I would not have put another version of “Maria” on the short list of things that the world needs more of…

ADAM: Neither would I, believe me! No, with a song like that you either have to find something new inside of it or just move on to something else. I’m really excited about the way it came out for us…we’re thinking of recording the song, but not to sell; we would just give it away. I’m not pretending to charge for it…the entire world of the recording industry has changed so dramatically in just a few short years.

Anthony, your set is performed with you fronting a full rock band…is this more or less the ALBINO KID band project that I’ve read mention of?

ANTHONY: That was just a fun name we used for what we do, but it’s actually not something in circulation. Dan Weiss, who was a member of the original Rent band, is the music director and plays keyboards.

We’re doing a mix of songs from my album; songs from this show that I did where I’m a character who’s obsessed with Queen, who sings in the style of Queen…and we do things like “Losing My Religion,” and a song from Hedwig. We’re adding another cover or two…Talking Heads, Crowded House.

Anything by XTC, my personal fave ‘New Wave” band? I was particularly interested to find out you were a big fan of Colin Moulding and Andy Partridge.

ANTHONY: Those guys were a huge influence to me melodically, but I’m not sure of any one song I’d put out there above all the rest!

And Adam, correct me me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t your name attached to a project where you were trying to bring the music of Queensrÿche to the stage?

ADAM: It’s true! I’m a huge fan of the Operation: Mindcrime album, and Geoff Tate has been a huge influence. I know there’s a way to do this!

Now, it’s probably not considered hyperbole to suggest that you both played a real part in shaping modern-day Broadway…and yet both of you have sort of expressed the same opinion; that there aren’t really any shows out there for you right now…

ADAM: Because of the financial aspects of the business, it’s tured to jukebox musicals and movie adaptation…recognizable commodities. To me, it’s antithetical to what the artistic process should be.

I’m 41 years old…I like to think I have a youthful appearance…but I don’t live in New York, so I can’t just pop in and out of shows. When I did Memphis I thought that I could bring something to the table…to me, there’s almost something sacred about Broadway, and I’d rather wait to do something great.

ANTHONY: I don’t know if there’s anything that feels like a great fit out there…I haven’t seen The Book of Mormon yet, though. I sympathize with anyone who’s involved with that show…I know what it’s like to get asked for tickets all the time!

I’m not interested in doing a show just to do a show. Any time you take on a role, you have to bring a lot to it. Right now I’m working on the stage adaptation of my book. It’s a one man show, with a band…I was just in Korea developing it there.

You’ve never been shy about your personal connection to your RENT role, and how the stuff you had been going through…living in the East Village, dealing with your mom’s cancer and friends with HIV…kind of informed your work in the show. Did it continue to help you as an actor in your later projects to have connected so deeply with that signature role…or is such an experience not something you’d recommend for just anyone?

ANTHONY: I’m not saying that the material you perform has to have THAT degree of resonance, but…something has to resonate. Rent just reflects so much of my life, coming when it did…my mom had just passed away, so I felt very close to the world that my character lived in.

Adam had never done a Broadway show, and he was also encouraged to get close to the character of Roger…the distance between us and our roles was tissue-paper thin. The degree of openness, honesty, truth that Adam brought to his work is amazing.

ADAM: Everybody approaches it differently. Roger is very similar to me, but I never felt comfortable calling myself an actor until Cabaret. It took me to another level, other than being ‘that rocker guy on Broadway.’ I like to look into other sides of myself; roles that are completely different from myself. I love immersing myself in a character; I love the costumes, the makeup. To disappear into a character is the biggest compliment.

You guys also made your mark at the beginning of a transitional era in the theater, in the greater culture, when the online component, the social media element really changed the way shows are made and marketed and even experienced by the audience. What are some of the ways in which you think the Broadway world has been impacted?

ADAM: Unfortunately, people need to Tweet and Facebook every detail of a show while it’s going on.  Regardless of what you think of that, it’s put critical control back into the hands of the audience, and removed a lot of the influence from the old circle of critics. Ben Brantley and the others have a right to their opinion, but to have three or four guys with the power to make or break a show was never a good thing.

ANTHONY: In the early years of Rent the presence of online chat forums started really having an impact. It was really cool, as an artist, to see what people were saying about the show, and to engage with them directly. I would think that a really savvy producer might take people’s responses into consideration to a degree; use that sort of response and interest for the betterment of a show.

I did Feeling Electric in 2005, which became Next to Normal, and everyone made good use of Twitter by that time. I felt like I did brilliant work in that one…it was extraordinary to be a part of it.

Well, you were in on the ground floor of that show, just like you were with RENT. There’s probably no substitute for that kind of perspective on a project…just as, I’m sure you’ll both agree, no subbing for the live-on-stage experience in a perpetually uncertain business.

ADAM: I come from the age when ‘live’ was LIVE; a time before singers enhanced their concerts with AutoTune and pre-recordings. At the end of the day, the ‘live’ thing keeps the business from going under…it’s part of our cultural lexicon. People have a hunger to see the actors in front of them…you HAVE to come out and see this.

Tickets for Saturday’s 8pm concert ($37 – $47) are available right here.

Wynn Harmon, Rich Silverstein and Gary Marachek look at THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES from a frantically farcical new angle, in the comedy going up April 19 at NJ Rep in Long Branch. (photo by SuzAnne Barabas)

You know the story: the creepy old mansion adrift on the ruddy, mist-shrouded moors of the West Country. The bloodline curse, the Great Grimpen Mire and the glowy-eyed hound from Hell. The celebrated sleuth, his easily flummoxed sidekick and the supernaturally-tinged suspenser that launched a thousand parodies, pastiches and pale imitations.

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought back his famous creation Sherlock Holmes in 1901 (by what could diplomatically be called Popular Demand), he resurrected the iconic detective in grand style, with The Hound of the Baskervilles. The third Holmes novel — the author’s first Holmes tale of any sort since controversially killing off the character eight years earlier — was a jolly-good ripping yarn that immediately caught the public’s fancy; an instant classic that served to reinforce the fact that the brilliant deductive brain from Baker Street was bigger (and, for many, more real) than his walrus-mustached creator.

The basis for several straightforward screen adaptations (including some good ‘uns with Basil Rathbone and Peter Cushing) and a slew of romps, The Hound of the Baskervilles hits the stage of New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch as a rollicking show-within-a-show — one that goes up in previews on Thursday, April 19 and opens on Saturday, April 21.

In the script by Steven Canny and John Nicholson, a ragtag troupe of small-time actors barnstorms their way around the countryside with their own production of The Hound — an endeavor that’s complicated by the fact that the three thespians (Wynn Harmon, Gary Marachek, Rich Silverstein) are forced to take on all of the parts in the show — male, female, canine and force of supernature.

The show that continues through May 27 marks the play’s New Jersey premiere, as well as the NJ Rep debut of director Mark Shanahan — an actor, playwright, voice artist and educator who’s intimately familiar with the concept of multitasking.

You wouldn’t be out of line to think that Hound would certainly fulfill one’s minimum daily requirement for farcical, fast-change thrills drawn from some of the most time-honored conventions of the “veddy British” mystery tale — but you would be wrong, my dear Inspector. There’s another Shanahan-helmed play in “town;” one that raises its first curtain some 72 hours after opening night at NJ Rep — and one that, incredible as it may seem, could even outpace Hound in the chaos department.

That other play is The 39 Steps, the Tony winning 2007 tour-de-farce adapted by Patrick Barlow from a vintage spy thriller by John Buchan — or, cutting to the chase, the 1935 screen version directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The show goes up on Tuesday, April 24 as the final production of the season at George Street Playhouse, continuing at the venerable New Brunswick venue through May 20.

A tale of mistaken manhunts, stolen secrets and confounding conspiracies comes equipped with wink-wing/nudge-nudge allusions to other works from the Master’s canon, along with a devilishly crowdpleasing device in which the supporting players in the four-person cast take on dozens of parts (including inanimate objects) in a breathless series of lightning-quick changes.

Shanahan, who understudied the lead in the show’s 2008 Broadway run AND directed two previous productions (when he wasn’t teaching a course in Hitchcock’s films at Fordham University), wrangles a cast that stars Tony nominee Howard McGillin as harried hero Richard Hannay. Stacie Morgan Lewis costars as all of the play’s female characters, with Michael Thomas Holmes and Mark Price as pretty much everybody and everything else.

UpperWETside managed to flag down the beyond-busy director as he galloped between Long Branch and New Brunswick on Route 18, like a man with a hellhound on his tail…

Director Mark Shanahan takes a whirlwind theater tour of New Jersey, with new productions at New Jersey Repertory Company (THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES) and George Street Playhouse (THE 39 STEPS).

upperWETside: Thanks for finding the time to talk! Just contemplating what your schedule must be like, running back and forth between these two shows, leaves me winded…you probably feel like one of the actors in THE 39 STEPS, not knowing which suit of clothes you’re supposed to be wearing at any given point… 

MARK SHANAHAN: It’s been a mammoth month. I’m happy as a pig in shit…I go to work each day with a bunch of really funny people, and an incredible staff at each theater.

And are things proceeding apace? Everything humming along on your way to a week of two premieres?

You know, I don’t even pay attention to these things! My attitude is, as soon as a paying audience shows up, we’re on! The train has left the station.

So let’s talk about this HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES…I understand you go way back with your affinity for Sherlock Holmes; a regular Baker Street Irregular…

In America, we call them “Sherlockians.” When I was 13, my uncle gave me an annotated copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles and I just fell in love with that world…I love that there are people out there who treat Holmes and Watson as actual historical figures; who take it all so seriously. All these experts who can figure out that a certain story takes place on a Tuesday, because of the train schedules…

I get a kick out of the fact that Arthur Conan Doyle, who was the inventor of the most rational character in literature, was so interested in the spirit world, in trying to contact the other side…whereas Harry Houdini, the illusionist, spent his time trying to debunk all that. You get a taste of that in the movie FairyTale.

Doyle had gotten pretty sick of Sherlock Holmes after a while; he wanted to be known for other things, like the Professor Challenger stories, so he famously killed off Holmes…of course the public outcry forced him to bring the character back, and The Hound of the Baskervilles was written after that time, although it was set before the story in which Holmes was supposedly killed.

It’s a story that really gives the readers what they want. You see a spooky castle in the middle of the country; a ghostly spectral dog that turns out to be a regular dog dressed up.

So yeah, I’m a big fan of the Holmes books…I’ve seen every version of the Hound films.

Even the one with William Shatner?

Right, the TV movie from the 1970s…the one with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore also; those guys did some great funny things with the Holmes characters.

Since then you’ve had Holmes being played by everybody from Charlton Heston, Roger Moore, Michael Caine, John Cleese, Rupert Everett…and now Robert Downey Jr.

It does prove once again that this character of Sherlock Holmes is so malleable…in the new films he’s a boxer, an action hero; he can be a drug addict or a comedian or any one of a number of things. Holmes is just this unbelievably brilliant character who survives any attempt at changing him.

And we keep flashing back to Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as the default conception of Holmes and Watson, even though most of the films they did together took place in the 1940s — with Rathbone sporting an incredibly bizarre haircut. 

I’m glad you mentioned that! Yes, a very strange haircut in a couple of those pictures. Just the first two movies with Rathbone and Nigel Bruce were period pieces, and that whole iconic image of Holmes, with the Inverness, the deerstalker cap, comes more or less from the magazine illustrations by Sidney Paget. A stage actor named William Gillette was the first to portray Holmes — in a play that he wrote and performed many times over the years — and that whole look of the character, with the pipe and everything, was kind of locked into place through him.

You mentioned the drug addict thing, which was really explored in detail by Nicholas Meyer with THE SEVEN PER CENT SOLUTION. What did you think of his books; that one and THE WEST END HORROR?

I did the premiere of Sherlock Holmes and The West End Horror, which was adapted by my friend Tony Dodge and his wife Marcia. I met my own wife, Jennifer Waldman — of Jen Waldman Studio — on that production ten years ago! She’s working on The 39 Steps as our movement choreographer, which is an important job in a show with all those quick changes and exits and entrances.

The West End Horror is a fun story because it takes place in the theater; it’s got people like Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde in it…all those people who were there in London in those years. You have to wonder what was in the water in that little patch of London back then.

It sounds like you and Mr. Holmes have levels of connection beyond anything I’ve imagined!

In fact, I asked the actor who played Shaw in that show to play Holmes at New Jersey Rep. This show is actually a pretty good, full rendition of The Hound…a pretty expert telling of the story that covers all the points.

Essentially, it’s about theater people…you have the sense that you’re seeing a traveling troupe who are here in Long Branch to put on a show tonight.

These actors somehow become a company, come together and make a show…there’s this feeling of ‘Hey, I love doing this!’ And it’s all done with a three man cast.

That’s something the show definitely shares in common with THE 39 STEPS.

The two plays are kissing cousins. In rehearsal, we’re asking what’s the LEAST we need to tell the MOST story…and the answer is, let the actors do it!

Sounds like a good approach for the oddly configured space they’ve got there at New Jersey Rep…a little shadowbox diorama of a stage that they’ve done all kinds of wonders with. Did they approach you with this project, or did you bring it to them?

I got a copy of the script and sent it to Gabe and SuzAnne (Barabas, founders of NJ Rep). They decided to go with it, and Gabe told me ‘I want my audience to come and have a wonderful time.’

You know, I’ve worked at fancy theaters, and I’ve worked at places that have no resources, no wing space…what Gabe and Sue have created here is something special. They’ve got a lot of graciousness and courage to choose things that they believe in. There’s a real community feeling to the space…you’re appreciated and treated well.

The Hound of the Baskervilles presents matinee and evening previews on April 19 and 20; opens April 21 at 8pm, and continues until May 27 with performances Thursdays through Sundays. Ticket reservations, showtimes and additional information can be obtained here. The 39 Steps goes up in New Brunswick April 24 and continues through May 20; take it right here to reserve tickets.

Jazz scholar/ WBGO disc jockey Gary Walker and guitarist Vic Juris are among the special guests TALKIN’ JAZZ with Joe Muccioli, in the series that returns to the Count Basie’s Carlton Lounge for three Mondays beginning tonight. 

Start Joe Muccioli to talking and he’ll tell you that “Jazz…grew up with America. It symbolizes American democracy.”

“You put several people into a place, a situation, and you honor all of their abilities, but at the same time you have rules, an underlying structure…a Constitution.”

A Red Bank resident and the Artistic Director of the borough-based nonprofit  Jazz Arts Project, the man they call “Mooche” has done a lot of talking, studying, teaching and listening on the topic of Jazz — and he’s walked the walk as well, having traveled the world conducting, arranging and working with everyone from Joe Piscopo to the London Philharmonic.

In the borough that birthed William “Count” Basie, they know Muccioli as the maestro behind the annual Sinatra Birthday Bash events at the  Count Basie Theatre; as the co-founder of the Jazz Arts Academy program; as the host of the way-cool Summer Jazz series atTwo River Theater — and as leader of the Red Bank Jazz Orchestra, the 17-piece organization that issued its maiden recording Strike Up the Band in 2011.

Add to that the fact that each and every April — a little bend in the calendar they call National Jazz Appreciation Month — Mooche hauls out his formidable “little black book” of Who’s Who contacts, commandeers the Basie Theatre building’s street-level Carlton Lounge, and offers music lovers access to a treasure trove of history, performance, sight, sound and scintillating conversation that could only be called Talkin’ Jazz. It’s a sophisticated series so cool that you’d be tempted to tell them “Joe sent me” at the door, were it not for the fact that it’s entirely free of charge and open to the public. It’s also a Monday evening affair that returns tonight, April 16, with a visit from one of the New York metro area’s most sought-after authorities on all things Jazz.

Author and photographer Tad Hershorn (left) joins Joe “Mooche” for a tribute to the late impresario Norman Granz (right) on Monday, April 23.

As the “morning man” on Newark-based public radio station WBGO Jazz 88.3FM, Gary Walker has spent some 25 years doing something that theoretically goes against the grain of the nocturnally-spawned music called Jazz — sending thousands of jazz aficionados blinking into the freshly risen sun with a dose of “America’s classical music” to keynote the day. The award winning broadcaster has himself met and interviewed everyone who’s anyone in jazz circles, and he joins Muccioli in the Carlton Lounge at 7pm to share the stories and the skinny on the greatest musicians of the millennium-spanning era.

On April 23, the topic will be Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice — and Mooche’s guest will be Tad Hershorn, music historian, photographer and author of an acclaimed new biography of Granz, the “iconoclastic, independent, immensely influential, often thoroughly unpleasant” promoter, producer and personal manager who boosted the careers of Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson; founded the awesome Verve record label and started the legendary Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts. Hershorn, who interviewed Granz extensively before his subject’s death in 2001, will offer some rare insights on the man who told him, “Any book on my life would start with my basic philosophy of fighting racial prejudice. I loved jazz, and jazz was my way of doing that.”

The Talkin’ Jazz series goes out on a high note the following Monday, April 30, with a whistle-stop by Jersey’s own Vic Juris, a go-to guitar ace and a “musical conversationalist” who’s performed with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Mel Torme, to Larry Coryell, Lee Konitz and his own quartet. Equally well known as an educator and author of instructional books, the skilled stylist of the six strings is sure to bring along his guitar as he joins Muccioli for a look back at his long and still-evolving career.

Admission to all of the events in the Talkin’ Jazz series is free, but seating is limited — and registration is both recommended, and as easy as taking it right here.

Brett Colby IS Professor Harold Hill…and Father Alphonse Stephenson IS everyone’s favorite Pentagon-based Broadway conductor/ Catholic priest/ Jersey Shore legend…when THE MUSIC MAN takes over the stage of the Algonquin in Manasquan beginning April 20.

Hide the passed hors d’oeuvres; squirrel away the plastic tumblers of merlot — we’re back in First Nighting mode, for another freewheeling, freeloading round of adventures in local theatah, up and down this thing we called the Upper Wet Side.

We’ve already clued you in on the current engagement of Maureen McGovern and her show Carry It On at Two River Theater — and in days to come we’ll be posting interviews with ace director Mark Shanahan (who’s got not one but TWO fun projects opening imminently in Long Branch and New Brunswick), as well as original RENTmates Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp (coming on April 21 to the Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University). Beginning right NOW, however, we’re kicking things strictly COMMUNITY, where everybody knows your name, and the star of the show probably has to help strike the set…

Simonelli Sez, all over the place. A longtime Monmouth County resident and a prolific playwright whose more than one dozen comedies and dramas are seen regularly on regional stages, Joe Simonelli has been an especially busy guy in recent months, at The First Avenue Playhouse in Atlantic Highlands (where his best known play Men Are Dogs continues a special monthly engagement) , at The Grange Theater in Howell — and at the Traco Theater in Toms River, the newly established downtown movie revival house where his original script Old Ringers begins a two weekend stand on Friday, April 13. A semi-sequel to Dogs, the “adult bawdy comedy” brings back two of that earlier show’s characters for a stand-alone scenario involving a quartet of senior ladies and an entrepreneurial adventure in the phone sex industry. The show continues through April 22 with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3 p.m. Traco Theater, 16 Washington St., Toms River • April 13 at 8pm (through 4/22)

Simonelli returns to the Traco in May with a fresh production of his With This Ring — but before that he’ll be back home on the Grange with a new staging of Roommates, an odd coupling involving a swinging ladies’ man, his divorced friend who comes to crash (and becomes the Thing That Would Not Leave), various meddling neighbors and still more mirthmaking machinery. Roommates opens at 8pm on Friday, April 27 and continues for four more shows on April 28, May 4 and May 5 (plus a 3pm matinee on April 29); tickets ($15) can be reserved by calling (732)768-2709. The Grange Playhouse, 4860 Route 9 South, Howell • April 27 at 8pm/ $15 (through 5/5)

That’s what’s opening tonight; flip the paperless for more going up tomorrow (April 14) and in weeks to come…

The cast of FLAMINGO COURT sees out the season in grand Floridastyle, as Monmouth Players hit the home stretch at their homestage Navesink Library Theater in Middletown.

ARSENIC on First Avenue. It just wouldn’t be a season of community theater without at least one sociable sip of Arsenic and Old Lace, the farcical Joseph Kesselring chestnut of murderous aunties, disappearing corpses, Karloffian killers, theater critics and various other lunatics. Right now and continuing through the month, director Gina Shuster and the hardworking folks at First Avenue Playhouse disinter this comic perennial for another run ‘round the window seat. It’s served up with dessert (and, er, beverage)  Fridays, Saturdays and select Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. through April 28 (with a Sunday matinee on April 15).First Avenue Playhouse, 123 First Ave., Atlantic Highlands • all tickets $20 (through 4/28)

MR. 80% at The Center. Any play that boasts “swishy high jinks” from a couple of straight male characters pretending to be gay — as well as a pair of female roommates described as “toothsome” — might prompt a question regarding precisely which planet we’re supposed to be on. As it turns out, we’re in the world of the Manhattan rental market — where people will pretty much do or say anything to get an affordable living arrangement — and in James Sherman’s comedy Mr. 80%, two female roommates seek to take on an additional woman (or gay man) and wind up with Sam, a comedian who, in classic sitcom style, feigns homosexuality to preserve his very friendly living arrangement. Beginning tonight, April 13 at 8pm, Mr. 80% makes itself at home inside the Center Players homestage in downtown Freehold Borough. Angela Trombotore, Matthew Gochman and Jeff Caplan star under the direction of Amy Levine, and the comedy continues Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through May 6; admission includes dessert and coffee. Center Playhouse, 35 South St., Atlantic Freehold • April 13 at 8pm/ $24 (through 5/6)

FLAMINGO COURT in Middletown. For the final production of their 59th (59th!) season of community theater, the folks at Monmouth Players leave the rustically historic environs of Navesink in favor of a South Florida condo complex — Flamingo Court by name, where in the world of Luigi Creatore’s ensemble comedy, the denizens of three different condo units each learn a valuable life lesson that ranges from “sex lives after sixty” to “where there’s a will, there’s a relative.” Usually performed with a troupe of five actors taking on the play’s ten roles, the production that opens on Saturday, April 14 offers up a company of veteran Players (including Lynne Cefalo, Charles Deitz, Bill Lee, Bob Mira, Paula Mira, Lori Renick, Sharon Sakosits, Jennifer Lauren  Scott and John Sheehan) acting under the direction of exec producer Paul Renick. Showtimes are 8:15pm on April 14, 21, 27 and 28 (as well as 2pm Sunday matinees on April 15, 22 and 29), with the festivities continuing through May 5. All performances of Flamingo Court are at the ever-charming (and impressively renovated) Navesink Library Theatre, and each show offers a justifiably famous spread of homemade desserts to sweeten the deal. Navesink Library Theatre, Sears and Monmouth Aves., Middletown • April 14 at 8:15pm/ $17 (through 4/29)

THE RAT PACK on LBI. Following up a landmark inaugural season for Surflight Theatre Artistic Producer Roy Miller — a season of stars (Justin Guarini, Judd Hirsch, Eve Plumb, Cindy Williams) and salvation (the Long Beach Island landmark fought its way back from bankruptcy) — the Beach Haven playhouse swings into 2012 with an extended engagement by The Rat Pack Revue that begins Wednesday, April 18. A trio of singing entertainers who expertly channel the collective Vegas heyday of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, the hit-packed revue ring-a-dings its way through May 6; take it the web site for showtimes, tickets and additional information. Surflight Theatre, Beach and Engleside Aves., Beach Haven • April 18 at 8pm (through 5/6)

THE WIZARD of the Basie. Back for a new season of lavish musical entertainments at a pair of locally legendary landmarks — the Count Basie Theatre and the Strand Theater — Red Bank-based Phoenix Productions kicks off 2012 with what’s perhaps the most instantly familiar tunefest to have never made its debut on the Broadway stage. Adapted from the uber-classic 1939 screen adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s book, The Wizard of Oz hits the stage with that MGM movie’s greatest asset intact — the amazing score of songs by Arlen and Harburg, from “Over the Rainbow” to “Yellow Brick Road” and everything right through the March of the Winkies. Local stage veteran Paul Chalakani directs a huge cast headed by Madelyn Monaghan as Dorothy, with Marybeth Jacobson, Joe Ronga, Dan Peterson, Joseph York, Lauren J. Cooke and some 40 additional Munchkins and Citizens of Oz. The show runs two weekends in Red Bank,  Fridays and Saturdays (April 20, 21, 27, 28) at 8pm and Sundays (April 22, 29) at 3pm. After that, it’s off to see the Strand in Lakewood, where the Wizard touches down for a single weekend, May 5 and 6 at 2pm. Tickets ($22-29) are still available from the Basie’s online box office, or directly from Phoenix Productions right here.   Count Basie Theatre, 99 Monmouth St., Red Bank • April 20 at 8pm/ $22-29 (through 4/29)

SAM on Sandy Hook. While his legacy will certainly rest with his staggering catalog of cinematic work, Woody Allen did manage to put one oft-revived stage perennial on his resume — and, not surprisingly, it’s a comedy that could only have come from the typewriter of a dedicated cineaste. In Play It Again, Sam, a classic film buff with a particular thing for Casablanca receives guidance on life and love from the trenchcoated spirit of Humphrey Bogart — and beginning Friday, April 20, Soar Productions returns to the renovated Post Theater at Fort Hancock (on the northern end of Sandy Hook) for a production of Sam that continues Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm through May 5, with a Sunday matinee on April 29. Take it here for tix. Post Theater, Hartshorne Dr. (Fort Hancock), Sandy Hook • April 20 at 8pm/ $18 (through 4/29)

LEGALLY BLONDE in Asbury Park.  Following a successful 2011 season that saw the long-running community stage troupe make a triumphant return to the historic Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park, producer-director Mark Fleming’s Premier Theatre Company stepped into 2012 with a never-before-seen show (the area debut of the rock-musical drama Next to Normal) and an all new, custom-crafted venue. Located inside a ballroom of the landmark Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel in Asbury town, the 120-seat Premier Room proved an ideal setting for the intimately scaled 2008 hit, in a brief run that concluded on April 1.

Premier returns to its eponymous Room in May with a fresh look at the Kander-Ebb classic Cabaret — but before that, the Paramount is once more the place to be when Fleming and company present another local first; this the Shore debut of Legally Blonde: The Musical. Adapted (with songs by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin) from Amanda Brown’s novel and its 2001 screen version starring Reese Witherspoon, Blonde spins the story of sorority girl Elle Woods and her adventure of self-discovery in the seemingly unlikely setting of Harvard Law School. Caitlin Chelednik stars as Elle in this single-weekend presentation, with Brandon O’Sullivan, Mary Lawrence and Kevin Ray Johnson in support under Fleming’s direction. Robert Sammond is music director for the production, and Nikki Snelson — of the show’s original Broadway cast — joins the team as choreographer.  Performances are  April 20 and 21 at 8pm, with a 1pm matinee on April 22. Tickets are $28 (discounts for seniors, students and kids under 14) and can be reserved online or by calling  (732)774-STAR. Paramount Theatre, Ocean and Fifth Aves., Asbury Park • April 20 at 8pm/ $28 (through 4/22)

1776 in Spring Lake. Even the Max Bialystock character from The Producers might have thought that a tunefest about the drafting of the Declaration of Independence was a particularly ill-advised pitch…but when 1776 walked away with the Tony as Best Musical in 1969, the likes of John Adams, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson soon took their place within the pantheon of favorite community theater roles. While the score of songs by Sherman Edwards (including “Sit Down John” and “Till Then”) never produced a signature showtune standard, the witty compositions work beautifully within the context of the characters and the plot — which, courtesy of Peter Stone’s book, boasts much more dramatic dialogue than the average musical. Beginning Friday, April 20, it’s 1776 all over again at The Spring Lake Community House, where the show continues Fridays and Saturdays through May 12 at 8pm. Tickets ($28, with discounts for seniors and kids), can be reserved online or by calling (732)449-4530. Spring Lake Communty House, Fifth and Madison Aves., Spring Lake • April 20 at 8pm/ $28 (through 5/12)

THE MUSIC MAN in Manasquan. While there’s probably nary a moment when somebody somewhere isn’t presenting or rehearsing a production of The Music Man, one upcoming local production has the populace particularly excited right here in (Squan) River City. Produced under the banner of the Algonquin Players, this latest look at Meredith Willson’s venerable 1957 slice of vintage Americana spotlights one of the area’s premier vocal talents as the charismatic, carpetbagging con man Professor Harold Hill — to say nothing of a music director whose frequent “homecoming” concerts are nearly all guaranteed sellouts.

Brett Colby, a globe-trotting comic character tenor based in Asbury Park (and a former administrator at the Algonquin ARTS Theatre), returns to the downtown Manasquan landmark for a turn at one of the most vividly sketched roles in all of American musical comedy. As if that weren’t enough of a draw, conducting the pit orchestra for all but one of the performances will be none other Father Alphonse Stephenson, founder of the Orchestra of St. Peter by the Sea and a Brigadier General in the US Air National Guard who famously served as music director for the 1980s Broadway run of A Chorus Line.  Boasting a cast of more than 30, the musical that gave us “Seventy Six Trombones,” “Trouble” and (yes, Family Guy fans) “Shipoopi” opens Friday, April 20 and continues with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m., through April 29. Several shows are sold out as this story is filed; so check online or call  (732)528-9211 to reserve tickets ($27 adults; $25 seniors; $18 students). Algonquin ARTS Theatre, 173 Main St., Manasquan • April 20 at 8pm/ $27 (through 4/29)