The Sonnentag Theatre at the IceHouse in Mount Dora is heading to the baseball diamond to start its 2024-25 season.
Award-winning comedy/musical “Damn Yankees” runs from July 19 to Aug. 11 at the Sonnentag.
The production tells the story of Joe Hardy, a young baseball player who trades his soul to the devil, and is based on the book “The Year The Yankees Lost the Pennant” by Douglass Wallop.
Darlin Barry, managing artistic director of the Sonnentag Theatre, said she’s been choosing the seasons for the past 17 years and focuses on what the local demographic would enjoy the most.
“Most enjoy musicals and comedies that raise people’s spirits. We want people to put their troubles at the door and leave them there,” the Mount Dora resident said. “1955 to the ‘80s are a very nostalgic time for our patrons.”
Barry said the main question of the musical is if the protagonist, played by Lee Childers, will “outsmart the devil.”
The devil is played by Kevin Kriegel, who has been performing at the Sonnentag since 2019 and has choreographed a few shows. Kriegel has been wanting to play this role for years.
“I’ve been wanting to play the role ever since I first saw the original movie as a teenager,” he said. “Now that I’m officially old enough, I jumped at the chance to check off another bucket list role. You never know how often they’ll pop up, so when they do, it adds to the pressure of auditioning.”
Barry said Kriegel is a “triple threat and perfect to play” the devil.
“It’s fun to play the bad guy, and you don’t get much worse than the devil himself,” Kriegel said. “Since this is a musical comedy, I expect that the audience will, at various times, root for and against me. He’s the character you love to hate.”
The show, a 1956 Tony Award winner for Best Musical, features fan favorite songs such as “Whatever Lola Wants Lola Gets” and “You Gotta Have Heart.”
“Another well-known song is ‘Two Lost Souls’,” Barry said. “(The song) is timely to the age group and something they will remember.”
A unique feature of this production is it will include tap dancing performances.
“Not every production uses tap, but we decided we wanted to do it, and (Kevin) is an incredible tap dancer,” Barry said. “Our show choreographer is a well-known, highly-regarded resident of The Villages, Jim Caisse. For about 15 years, he produced and choreographed lavish and highly successful shows with a Villages group known as Music in Motion.”
This is the first performance that Caisse, a Village Santo Domingo resident, will be choreographing at the Sonnentag, and it’s his first time back on the cast and crew list since his first performance at the theater in 2007, when he danced in “Crazy For You.”
After retiring from his role as choreographer for Music in Motion, Caisse said he went to a show at the IceHouse, where he ran into Barry and learned about the opportunity to choreograph this show.
“When you do community theater, you have different levels of talented people,” Caisse said. “This group is talented.”
Barry said a lot of investments were made into the costumes and scenery for shows to become a full production.
There are “a lot of good outfits,” Barry said, adding that the devil has several costume changes to help him “blend in” to the scenery around him.
“He dresses up as a reporter and a government employee,” Barry said.
Buddy Fales, scenery director of the Sonnetag Theatre at the IceHouse, started out as an actor for the theater in 2014 before eventually becoming the full-time scenery director.
“When we began brainstorming set designs for ‘Damn Yankees,’ one focus was the devil’s apartment,” he said. “Darlin had the idea, ‘What would the apartment look like if Hugh Hefner was the devil?’ It was a lot of fun to imagine and create that,” he said.
Kriegel said he anticipates this show being an audience favorite.
“There’s a level of joy and excitement (and a little nervousness) in sharing your weeks and weeks of hard work with an audience for the first time that is unmatched,” Kriegel said.
Tickets are available at Icehousetheatre.com.
Staff writer Brea Jones can be reached at 352-753-1119, ext. 5414, or brea.jones@thevillagesmedia.com.
