The Symphony of Northwest Arkansas closes its 2017-18 season with a concert version, in Italian with English supertitles, the first act of Giacomo Puccini's opera La Boheme, 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Fayetteville's Walton Arts Center, 495 W. Dickson St.
Soprano Danielle Talamantes sings the lead role of Mimi, with tenor Kyle Tomlin as Rodolfo, baritone Jesse Stock as Marcello, bass-baritone Alexander Adams-Leytes as Benoit, baritone Thomas Gunther as Schaunard and bass Benjamin LeClair as Colline. Music Director Paul Haas conducts.
The second half of the program will be Richard Strauss' tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Tickets are $30-$52, $10 for college students with a valid student ID. Call (479) 443-5600 or visit the website, sonamusic.org/tickets.
Guthrie tribute
Playwright, actor and musician Randy Noojin will perform his one-man multimedia tribute to Woody Guthrie, Hard Travelin' With Woody, 8:15 p.m. Saturday at the Jim and Joyce Faulkner Performing Arts Center, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 453 Garland Ave., Fayetteville.
Singer, songwriter and UA alumna Alisha Jones will open the show at 7:30. Tickets are $20, $10 for senior citizens and UA students, faculty and staff. Call (479) 575-5387 or visit faulkner.uark.edu.
Noojin will also hold a songwriting workshop at 2 p.m. May 6 at the Fayetteville Public Library, 401 W. Mountain St., Fayetteville. Seating is limited and registration is required; call (479) 856-7000 or visit faylib.org.
Ann and auditions
Actress Amy Eversole portrays the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards as the Arkansas Public Theatre stages Ann by Holland Taylor, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and May 10-12, 2 p.m. May 6 and 13 at the Victory Theater, 116 S. Second St., Rogers. The one-woman show contains adult language and is not recommended for those under 17. Doors open an hour before curtain. Cabaret seats are $25, $40 per two-seat table; balcony seats are $18. Call (479) 631-8988 or visit arkansaspublictheatre.org.
And the theater will hold auditions for An Act of God by David Javerbaum, 7 p.m. May 7 at the Victory Theater. Doors open at 6:30. Callbacks, if needed, will take place at 7 p.m. May 8. Auditions will be based upon readings from the script. The play contains adult language and is not recommended for those under 17. Production dates are June 8-10 and 14-17. An audition packet, including audition times, scenes, character descriptions and rehearsal schedule is available for download at arkansaspublictheatre.org.
Dance Fusion
Western Arkansas Ballet performs pieces by aspiring student choreographers for its eighth annual Dance Fusion, 2:30 p.m. today at Breedlove Auditorium, University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, 5210 Grand Ave., Fort Smith. Tickets are $5 (cash only). Call (479) 785-0152 or visit waballet.org.
'Touch Gallery'
The Fort Smith Regional Art Museum, 1601 Rogers Ave., Fort Smith, opens "The Touch Gallery" on Tuesday on the museum's main floor. The exhibit consists of an assortment of sculptures and a painting created with bronze, carved wood, marble, resin and acrylic paint that visitors, especially children, will be encouraged to explore with their hands. Museum hours are 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday- Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free. Call (479) 784-2787 or visit fsram.org.
Jazz rock combos
Four music combos -- Jazz Combo I, Jazz Combo II, Jazz Trombone Choir and newly formed University of Arkansas at Monticello Rock Band, will perform at 7 p.m. Monday in the Visual and Performing Arts Center at UAM, off U.S. 425, Monticello. Admission is free. Call (870) 460-1060.
Broadway season
The return to the Robinson Center stage of the musical Jersey Boys, the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, will open Celebrity Attractions' 2018-19 season, Oct. 12-14. It's the promoter's 20th season of touring Broadway shows in Little Rock.
The rest of the lineup (all performances at Robinson Center Performance Hall, West Markham Street and Broadway, Little Rock):
• Nov. 20-25: Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequel to The Phantom of the Opera
• Dec. 22-23: Finding Neverland. Peter Pan playwright J.M. Barrie struggles to find inspiration until he meets four young brothers and their beautiful widowed mother.
• March 15-17: Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita
• May 24-26: The Sound of Music, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.
Five-show season ticket packages are $144-$425. Call (501) 244-8800 or visit celebrityAttractions.com.
Bard season
Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre's 12th season opens at 7:30 p.m. June 8 with William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, outdoors on the lawn of McAlister Hall at the University of Central Arkansas, 201 Donaghey Ave., Conway and runs June 8-July 8 with four shows in repertory.
Additional Winter's Tale performances will be at 7:30 p.m. June 9, 17, 24, June 28, 30 and July 4, 6, 8.
The summer's other three shows will be on the stage of Reynolds Performance Hall, where the audience will also sit: Lerner and Loewe's musical My Fair Lady, 7:30 p.m. June 15-16, 27 and July 3; 2 p.m. June 24, July 4; 2 and 7:30 p.m. July 1 and 7; Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part One, 7:30 p.m. June 22-23, 26, 29, July 5; 2 p.m. June 30 and July 8; and a family-friendly adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, 2 p.m. June 28, July 3, July 5; 10 a.m. June 29, July 4 and 7, subsequently touring across the state in June and July.
Winter's Tale performances are pay-what-you-can ($15 per person suggested donation). Tickets to the two Reynolds Performance Hall main stage shows are $32, $25 for students, senior citizens and active military/students); for Much Ado About Nothing, $15, $10 for students. Two-play packages (Henry IV, Part One and My Fair Lady) are $45. Call (501) 852-0702 or (866) 810-0012 or visit arkshakes.com.
Argenta season
The Argenta Community Theater's 2018-19 production season opens July 18-28 with Big River, Roger Miller's musical based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The rest of the lineup:
• Dec. 5-15: The first of what Producing Artistic Director Vincent Insalaco has promised will be an annual reprise of A Christmas Carol, Arkansas playwright Judy Goss' adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic that premiered in 2017.
• Feb. 27-March 9: Newsies, music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Jack Feldman, book by Harvey Fierstein
• July 17-27, 2019: A Chorus Line, music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, book by James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante.
Visit argentacommunitytheater.org.
Style on 04/29/2018