Alison Fraser Set to Lead Tennessee Williams Songbook Concert in Provincetown, 9/23

Broadway star Alison Fraser, twice-nominated for Tony awards, returns to the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival this year, in a concert that "carries us on an exhilarating journey through the songs America’s great playwright chose as dramatic highlights in many of his plays."

 

Among other pleasures in the one-night performance of The Tennessee Williams Songbook are “It’s Only a Paper Moon” (from A Streetcar Named Desire), “The Party’s Over Now,” “If I Didn’t Care,” a sultry “St. Louis Woman,” some suave Noel Coward and silky Duke Ellington, Mississippi blues and an Italian romance.

 

Fraser will be backed by piano powerhouse Allison Leyton-Brown a classically-trained virtuoso acclaimed for driving the beat and rattling the rafters in a dazzling array of musical styles.  She will be leading a remarkable ensemble:  three-time Emmy-winner J. Walter Hawkes, who solos on the trombone and doubles on the ukelele,Santiago Cardenas, the guitarist from the mariachi band in the Festival’s production of Ten Blocks on the Camino Real , Stefano Fascioli, the bass player from the Festival’s  iBlues di Tennessee Williams from Italy, along with Boston’s brassy Hot Tamales.

 

Festival Curator David Kaplan, who compiled the constellation of songs and staged the concert said,  “When Blanche Dubois sings “It’s Only a Paper Moon” in the bathtub, that’s when A Streetcar Named Desire begins to derail. In almost all his plays Williams floats pop tunes as bubbles of hope that inevitably burst.  Williams began Streetcar with a vision of a woman sitting alone in moonlight, waiting for someone who would never come.  Add hot music and it’s the Tennessee Williams Songbook."

 s Tennessee Willi

Alison Fraser was twice nominated for Tony Awards (for The Secret Garden and Romance/Romance). She is a nationally acclaimed performer who has appeared in concert at such venues as Carnegie Hall, The White House, The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, The Tisch Center for the Arts, The Folger Shakespeare Library, Joe's Pub and Symphony Space.  Audiences cheered for Fraser in Tennessee Williams’ Dirty Shorts at last year’s TW Festival. 

 

 

The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival takes place Thursday, September 20 through Sunday, September 23, 2012. Festival passes, including access to all shows, are available now online at www.twptown.org or by calling 1-866-789-TENN (8366).  ACarte Blanche Pass includes tickets to all performances as well as access to exclusive donor parties, events, and more.  Special group packages, student prices, and Flex Passes are also available. For full details on Festival performances and events, visitwww.twptown.org.