EUSTIS — The cast and crew of Bay Street Players are kicking off their company’s 2025-26 season — their 50th “golden season” — with a feel-good, folksy musical featuring tunes and a script co-written by Steve Martin and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Edie Brickell.
The production of “Bright Star” brings to a Lake County stage, for the first time, a beloved musical that debuted on Broadway in 2016, garnering a Tony nomination for Best Original Score.
Critics and audiences have expressed surprise and elation after watching “Bright Star,” praising its down-home ballads, kissed by banjo and fiddle strings and set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina in 1945-46 with flashbacks to 1923. Some have told reporters that they can’t believe the comedic actor co-wrote the songs in “Bright Star.”
Quick side note: Co-playwright Steve Martin is more than a jokester.
In addition to “Only Murders in the Building,” and a slew of movies, he’s attracted buzz as a writer and musician, from his thought-provoking and clever play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” (1993) to his novel “Shopgirl,” adapted into a 2005 film, to his performances and recordings with the Steep Canyon Rangers.
“Bright Star” has been lauded as one of the celebrity’s finer moments. The play follows literary editor Alice (Avry Aviles), who reconnects with her long-lost love, Jimmy Ray (Noah Clark) and meets a young soldier and aspiring writer, Billy (Nico Querino), who’s just returned home from combat in World War II.
Billy awakens in Alice a longing for the child she once lost, and he has his own realizations. Victoria Rivera plays Margo Crawford, Billy’s love interest.
Co-lead Clark had high praise for his fellow actors and his directors.
That’s right, directors, plural: Ashley Peters and John Corneilson are labeled as directors of the show. And there’s Molly Schoolmeester, the show’s intimacy director.
The leads, especially Clark, have worked closely with Schoolmeester. “She makes sure that there’s a conversation between the actor and director about what is OK, what is not OK, and what we are all comfortable with.”
According to Clark, the intimacy director “is there to create choreography between the characters that allows for the audience to really believe that these characters are completely in love and that the relationship blossoms over the course of the show.”
What’s an example of some intimate direction that Clark received?
“There’s one point where I take Alice’s hand and put it to my chest, and I literally just have my thumb running across her hand. That moment alone can create more of a realistic feeling and a realistic view for the audience instead of just taking the hand and putting it straight to my chest. Because that can look just kind of robotic and just blocking, but adding in just that one little small gesture and movement with my thumb can create the believability and realism that the show needs.”
He said there’s an unspoken language between him and his fellow castmates, knowing looks and gestures.
“Bright Star,” Clark said, has been therapeutic during a challenging time working in the arts.
He audibly gets a little choked up talking about it over the phone.
“I’ve even texted one of my other cast members saying this show has saved me in some ways,” Clark shared.
Co-star Clark is also talented as an actor and musician. He is making his Bay Street Players’ debut in “Bright Star,” works in music and audio production, and has been spreading the word about the show, helping with the marketing and trying to put people in the seats for the 2025-26 season premiere at the historic State Theatre.
The show almost had a live backing band but a couple of musicians had to pull out. So, if you like to play music and haven’t had a chance to in a while, hit the theater up for its production of “Jimmy Buffet’s Escape to Margaritaville” next year.
“Bright Star,” Clark emphasized, is not one of the “overdone musicals.”
“It’s honestly very rarely done. The plot of the story and just the whole message that it tries to convey is so beautiful and so hopeful that it’s a very rare musical … Growing up in Tennessee and Missouri, I come from a kind of southern and more country background. So, when I heard that they were having auditions for this musical, I just knew that I had to audition, and I had to at least help be part of it in some capacity … I just want this musical to succeed.”
Indeed, “Bright Star” shows us once again that Bay Street Players is choosing not to settle only for the same ol’, same ol’ (although, you can still catch a classic, often with a twist, from time to time such as “King Lear,” William Shakespeare’s tragic tale set against a post-apocalyptic backdrop, from Jan. 23-Feb. 8).
“There seems to be a kind of common agreement among a lot of the cast members that this show came at a very hard time in some of our lives,” Clark said, “so having ‘Bright Star’ has helped us get through some of these harder and darker times and has helped us create a community with each other and a trust with each other while we’re all dealing with stuff.
“Its message is you’re not alone, that there is always hope, that there’s always the sun is going to shine again.”
“Bright Star” runs at the State Theatre in Eustis, 109 N. Bay St., from Friday, Aug. 29, through Sept. 14. Visit the Bay Street Players website at eustisstatetheatre.org for details and tickets.
This article originally appeared on Daily Commercial: ‘Bright Star’: Bay Street Players expects to shine in 50th season premiere
Reporting by Julie Garisto, Leesburg Daily Commercial / Daily Commercial
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
