Because “Love and Lobsters” is a world premiere, and the writer of the musical happens to live in Freeport, the theater group Freeport Players has had the opportunity to tinker with the summer production, which debuts at the Freeport Performing Arts Center on July 16.
“Love and Lobsters” is the first musical written by John Linscott, a jazz musician and composer who has worked with Freeport Players since its early days. Not acting as musical director, Linscott nevertheless is helping to oversee the early rehearsals, and the changes that have gone with them. Simon Skold, drama director at Freeport High School, is the director. Dane Roger Grondin is musical director.
“One of the things about this production is it is a new work,” said Elizabeth Guffey, executive director of Freeport Players. “The first month of rehearsals we made a whole round of changes with John.”
Guffey said that the cast, which includes Laura Hurd-Whited of North Yarmouth in the lead role of Laura Lawson, has responded well to that challenge.
“They have risen to that occasion and are embracing that,” Guffey said. “We’re now deep enough into the rehearsal process that things have settled down.”
Freeport Players bills “Love and Lobsters” as a “Manhattan meets Maine love story.” Lawson, a performer, has tired of the New York City nightclub scene, and with city life itself. She comes to Maine and meets a lobsterman, and matters become complicated when her ex-partner shows up in Maine himself, and Lawson faces a choice.
Jonathan Libby plays the Maine lobsterman, John Doughty, and Mike Banas is Lawson’s New York boyfriend.
“It’s a love story in a coastal Maine village,” Guffey said.
Gar Roper, venerable Freeport Players actor and playwright, said that Freeport Players always looks to source professionalism from the local community.
“It’s always created by professional and deeply talented local people,” Roper said. “John brings the immediate vision of the show – why he wrote it, how it expressed something for him about Maine. This show creates an opportunity for high levels of talent and performance and it brings to Freeport the kind of theater that’s broader and more inclusive than an equity theater, which is the importing of theater from other places. We have professional, high-level talent.”
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