The Colonial Theatre Presents John Lithgow: Stories By Heart 10/7

John Lithgow will bring his show: Stories By Heart to the Colonial on October 7, at 7:30PM. Tickets for the performance are $75 and $45 and can be purchased in person at the Colonial Ticket Office at 111 South Street Monday-Friday 10AM-5PM, performance Saturdays 10AM-2PM, by calling (413) 997-4444 or online at www.thecolonialtheatre.org.

Tony and Emmy Award-winner John Lithgow performs a double-bill of stories: Uncle Fred Flits By by P.G. Wodehouse and Haircut by Ring Lardner. Stories By Heart is a touching and funny meditation on the art and essence of storytelling as the tie that binds humanity. Spanning three generations of family history, the performance-written and performed by John Lithgow-moves from the dazzling language of Wodehouse's comic monologues to Ring Lardner's dark and suspenseful story.

Invoking memories of his grandmother and father before him, Mr. Lithgow traces his roots as an actor and storyteller, interspersing his own story with two great stories that were read to him and his siblings when they were children. These are Uncle Fred Flits By by P.G. Wodehouse and Haircut by Ring Lardner.

In the first, a fretful young Englishman is taken on a wild afternoon's escapade in suburban London by his irrepressible uncle. In a hilarious tour de force, Lithgow performs with zany abandon, portraying ten distinct, outrageous characters (including a parrot). By contrast, Haircut is a darkly comic look at Midwestern American implacability. It is a captivating yarn told by a gossipy barber in small-town Michigan as he gives a shave and a haircut to a stranger in town. Stories By Heart provides ample evidence of the power of storytelling, the magic of theatre, and the talents of one of our greatest actors.

Although John Lithgow is an actor with a broad range of interests and talents in every area of the entertainment industry-and even outside it, he has been working in show business since the early seventies, and has achieved stunning success in wildly varied ventures. A list of his restless pursuits strains credulity. At heart, Lithgow is a theatre actor. In 1973, he won a Tony Award three weeks after his Broadway debut, in David Storey's The Changing Room. Since then, he has appeared on Broadway eighteen more times, earning another Tony, three more Tony nominations, four Drama Desk Awards, and induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame. His performances have included major roles in My Fat Friend, Trelawney of the "Wells," Comedians, Anna Christie, Bedroom Farce, Beyond Therapy, M. Butterfly, The Front Page, and most recently, Retreat from Moscow, Mrs. Farnsworth, and the musicals Sweet Smell of Success (his second Tony), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. In 2007 Lithgow made his Royal Shakespeare Company debut as Malvolio in Neil Bartlett's production of Twelfth Night a rare honor for an American actor. In the fall of 2008, he returned to the Broadway stage as Joe Keller in the critically acclaimed revival of the Arthur Miller classic, All My Sons.

In the early 1980's Lithgow began to make a major mark in films. At that time, he was nominated for Oscars in back-to-back years, for The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment. In the years before and after, he has appeared in over thirty films. Notable among them have been All That Jazz, Blow Out, Twilight Zone: the Movie, Footloose, 2010, Buckaroo Banzai, Harry and the Hendersons, Raising Cain, Ricochet, Cliffhanger, Orange County, Shrek, Kinsey, a flashy cameo in Dreamgirls and in the recent Confessions of a Shopaholic.

For his work on television, Lithgow has been nominated for ten Emmy Awards. He has won four of them, one for an episode of Amazing Stories, and three for what is perhaps his most celebrated creation, the loopy character of the alien High Commander, Dick Solomon, on the hit NBC comedy series 3rd Rock from the Sun. In that show's six-year run, Lithgow also won the Golden Globe, two SAG Awards, The American Comedy Award, and, when it finally went off the air, a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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