THAT LADY FROM MAXIM'S and SHADOWLANDS Set for Isle of Shoals 17th Season

Isle of Shoals Productions, Inc., is celebrating its 17th season with two wildly different productions: the musical That Lady from Maxim's based on a classic French farce alternates with a rare revival of the powerful drama about C.S. Lewis, Shadowlands. Though vastly dissimilar in every way, each has a dynamic unconventional woman at its center.

Suggested by La Dame de chez Maxim by the classic French farceur Georges Feydeau, Isle of Shoals offered the World Premiere of That Lady from Maxim's last year. Audience response was so positive, the company is bringing it back this year for a longer run (16 performances), with most of the original cast of 11, a revised script and several new songs. That Lady takes place in 1899 Paris. After too much champagne at the notorious nightspot Maxim's, a respectable married physician wakes up to find a scantily clad Lady in his bed -- and has no idea how she got there. Desperate to explain himself to his pious wife and his rich uncle, he finds himself entangled in a web of misunderstandings, intrigues and mistaken identities -- gleefully orchestrated by the Lady in Question. BRyan Williams, who wrote book, music and lyrics, is an award-winning playwright/composer whose dozens of plays and musicals have been seen in theatres across the country and on television.

The Tony-nominated and Olivier Award winning Shadowlands, by William Nicholson, is the true-life story of C.S. Lewis, Oxford don and celebrated author of The Chronicles of Narnia. In mid-life he awakens to romance with the poet Joy Davidman, a younger, divorced and liberated Jewish-American woman with a young son. His eventual marriage to her rocks his conservative university world of the 1950s. When he loses her, this devout writer comes close to despair, and finds himself in danger of losing his faith and his hope, as well as his beloved stepson. IOS Artistic Director Lance Hewett has conceived the work as an emotion-packed memory play, with an evocative musical score and luxurious lighting to create a magical atmosphere befitting a play about the author of the Narnia series.

That Lady from Maxim's opened September and will run for 11 more performances: Eves 8:00 PM: Fri Oct 5, Sun Oct 7 (7:30), Wed Oct 10, Thurs Oct 11, Fri Oct 12, Wed Oct 17, Thurs Oct 18, Sat Oct 20; Saturday matinees 2:30 PM: Oct 6, 13; Sunday matinee 3:00 PM: Oct 21

Shadowlands opens tonight, Saturday Oct. 6 and will run for 9 more performances: Eves 8:00 PM: Sat Oct 6, Tues Oct 9, Sat Oct 13, Tues Oct 16, Fri Oct 19; Saturday Matinee Oct 20: 2:30 PM; Sunday Matinee Oct 7: 3:00 PM; Oct 14: 3:00 & 7:30 PM.

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