The Brooklyn Papers / Greg Mango

Dear diary: The Heights Players season begins on Sept. 9 with Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs," featuring Michael Basile (above) in rehearsal for the role of Eugene Jerome.

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The Heights Players’ upcoming season promises to be something special indeed. It will be a broad sampling of favorites dating back to the group’s very beginnings.

The reason? This is the Heights Players’ 50th season, and the board of directors included a survey in their newsletter listing all the shows the Heights Players had produced in their first 40 years. The survey asked patrons and members which shows they would like to see, by genre, in the 2005-2006 season.

"There were three factors we had to consider in the end," member-at-large John Bourne told GO Brooklyn. "First was popularity, second was availability [could the Heights Players get the rights] and third was, did we have a director who wanted to do the show?"

The result is a season filled with comedy, drama, music and suspense.

The season kicks off with Neil Simon’s celebrated semi-autobiographical play about two families living under the same roof in 1937 Brooklyn - "Brighton Beach Memoirs."

"We wanted a Neil Simon," says Bourne. "And there was ’Brighton Beach’ hitting us right on top of the comedy line."

Originally presented at the Alvin Theatre in 1983, the play earned a Tony for star Matthew Broderick and ran for 1,530 performances. At the Heights Players, the show, which runs Sept. 9 through Sept. 25, will be directed by Robert J. Weinstein.

Ellen Pittari directs "Oklahoma!" by Rodgers and Hammerstein. The duo "have always been very popular with our audiences," says Bourne. The landmark musical, which will be staged Oct. 7 through Oct. 23, was based on Lynn Rigg’s play "Green Grow the Lilacs." The nostalgic story is filled with charming love songs like "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" and "People Will Say We’re in Love"; comic numbers such as "I Can’t Say No" and "Kansas City"; and rousing ensemble songs including the grand finale, "Oklahoma."

Bourne says "The Man Who Came to Dinner" was the most popular play of all those listed in the survey.

"I had directed the show. I’d love to do it again," he told the board of directors. And so George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s classic comedy, about a famous guest who overstays his welcome, will be the third play of the season, running Nov. 4 through Nov. 20.

Although contemporary audiences may not recognize the celebrities, the characters in the play were patterned on theater critic Alexander Wollcott (the guest), Harpo Marx, Gertrude Lawrence, Noel Coward and others. The play opened in 1939, ran for 738 performances and was made into a 1942 film featuring Bette Davis and Jimmy Durante.

Just in time for the holiday season comes "A Christmas Carol," from Dec. 2 through Dec. 18, a musical version of Dickens’ classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and how he learns the true meaning of the holiday. Jim McNulty directs.

The large number of people who voted for Eugene O’Neill’s "Ah Wilderness!" came as a surprise to many at the Heights Players, but Bourne says that because they wanted to do a classic American playwright and Ted Thompson was eager to direct, it was happily chosen as the fourth show of the season.

"Ah Wilderness!" which will be staged Jan. 6 through Jan. 22, is O’Neill’s only comedy. This coming-of-age story takes a sentimental look at the playwright’s youth. The long-running Theatre Guild production opened in 1933, and ever since the play has been popular with university and community theater groups.

Agatha Christie, a Heights Players favorite, gets a hearing Feb. 3 through Feb. 19 when Fabio Teliercio directs "Witness for the Prosecution." This suspense-filled courtroom drama is best known as a 1957 Billy Wilder film featuring such celebrities as Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton.

The next show, Arthur Miller’s "The Crucible," was the one play that, according to Bourne, the Heights Players board most wanted to present this season.

"We were looking for ’The Crucible’ because that was the second play that the Heights Players ever did - in May of ’57 - and that put us on the map," says Bourne. "Within three months the Heights Players was incorporated as a nonprofit educational group, we started our workshop programs and decided we were going to be a residential company in Brooklyn.

"We also wanted a Brooklyn playwright," said Bourne. "It was a play Ed Healy wanted to do." Of course, Miller, who died earlier this year, is one of America’s most renowned playwrights too, and "The Crucible," which the Heights Players will stage March 3 through March 19, is one of his most acclaimed works. Although it is ostensibly about the 17th-century Salem witch trials, the real (though unstated) subject of "The Crucible" is McCarthyism and the witch hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s.

"Wait Until Dark" is a very popular mystery, but Bourne said he was surprised that the play was ranked above several Agatha Christie plays in the Heights Players’ survey. Frederick Knott’s edge-of-your-seat thriller is about ruthless crooks, drugs and a clever blind woman whom the crooks try to bully and outwit. The Broadway show opened in 1966 with Lee Remick starring as the blind woman. In the 1967 film, Audrey Hepburn took the lead. Susan Montez directs the Heights Players’ version, which is slated to run March 31 through April 16.

The season ends with the blast of "76 Trombones" as Thomas N. Tyler directs Meredith Wilson’s "The Music Man," which runs May 5-21. The 1957 Broadway hit that did so much to advance the career of its star, Robert Preston (who played Harold Hill in the 1962 film as well), is about a charming con man who figures out a gimmick for stealing money from the residents of River City but ends up having his own heart stolen by the winsome Marian, the town librarian.

Fifty years of providing good, community theater at affordable prices in Brooklyn is quite an accomplishment. It’s certainly cause for a season of celebration.

A subscription to the Heights Players 2005-2006 season, which kicks off with "Brighton Beach Memoirs" (Sept. 9-25), is $80. The Heights Players are located at 26 Willow Place between State and Joralemon streets in Brooklyn Heights. For more information, call (718) 237-2752 or visit www.heightsplayers.org.

©2005 Community Newspaper Group