The Emperor's New Clothes Wraps Up Two-Week Production

The Storybook Musical Theater wrapped up its two-week production of The Emperor’s New Clothes this past weekend at

The non-profit Professional Children's Theater Company – in its 19^th season – performed a musical of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, which began on March 3 and came to a conclusion Sunday.

Young children throughout the area – accompanied by their parents and grandparents – enjoyed the professional atmosphere the Mitchell Performing Arts Center has to offer.

“It’s brought a lot of outside people in,” executive director Marc Goldberg said, “organizations like elementary schools, private schools, social service organizations to the community. And they get to see what the Academy is like and the Mitchell Performing Center is like. They are pretty impressed by the facilities that are here, so they like to come back here.”

The musical consists of a small cast of seven professional performers, most of which are a part of the Actors’ Equity Association.

“We have auditions and most of them are professional Equity actors,” Goldberg said. “Most of them are local to the area,” Goldberg said.

Dana Schmidt (Emporer Vorhees the Vain), Ted Wioncek III (Sid), David Stahl (Sam), Jared Benn (Tom), Maryann Bucci (Madeline – Tom’s wife), David Mulholland (Prime Minister Minnimaster) and Faith Sherman (Pennimeister) are the on-stage stars.

Not appearing on stage were Patricia Goldberg (director/playwright), Kevin Arruda (composer) and Nancy Wiker (musical director).

A family-type audience of three generations took in the final day of the production. Goldberg was pleased with the show’s success, but realizes more popular shows draw larger crowds, part of which he believes is due to the fact the story is outdated.

“We’ve been doing about 70-percent attendance,” he said. “It’s going pretty well. It’s not as well-received because it’s a little older production. It’s geared to a little higher age level than our usual productions. So it’s not like Snow White, where a lot of people will come with 3-year-olds.”

Snow White was the first of three installments the Storybook Musical Theater performs throughout the year. Yesterday concluded the second show and the final production is Jack and the Bean Stalk, which runs in May, July and August.

“This is our second show,” Goldberg said. “We did Snow White around the holidays in December. A production like that sees a bigger audience.

“We usually run about two weeks at this location,” Goldberg added. “We also perform at St. Joe’s University. We don’t perform our middle show at St. Joe’s, only our first and third shows.”

The Mitchell Performing Arts Center’s next performance is the Oratorical Event, presented by ANC secondary schools, on Sunday, March 20 at 7 p.m.