Garland Summer Musicals announces 2008 season

by Shawn Parikh

Damn Yankees and The Will Rogers Follies are coming soon.

Obviously, the Garland Summer Musicals' season takes place in the summer only, but they have quite a reputation in the theater community. All performances are held at the Patty Granville Arts Center and tickets ($19-24) can be reserved by calling the Box Office at 972-205-2790. Here are the two shows they will be presenting:

• Damn Yankees, from June 20 - 29. Damn Yankees is a musical comedy with a book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop and music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story is a modern retelling of the Faust legend set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., during a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League Baseball. The musical is based on Wallop's novel, The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.
• The Will Rogers Follies, from July 25 - August 3. Tony Award-winning musical with a book by Peter Stone, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and music by Cy Coleman. It focuses on the life and career of famed humorist and performer Will Rogers, using as a backdrop the Ziegfeld Follies, which he often headlined, and describes every episode in his life in the form of a big production number. The Rogers character also performs rope tricks in between scenes. The revue contains snippets of Rogers' famous homespun style of wisdom and common sense and tries to convey the personality of this quintessentially American figure whose most famous quote was "I never met a man I didn't like."