Flagler Playhouse Opens 2022-23 Season with “Oliver!”

The five-play season opens Friday Sept. 23 with the musical “Oliver!” and concludes in May with the musical “Barnum.” The musical “Rent” and the dramas “Driving Miss Daisy” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” are also on tap.

Flagler Playhouse performances are at its theater at 301 E. Moody Blvd., Bunnell. Shows for each play’s run are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and 2 p.m. Sunday, unless otherwise noted in the list below.

Tickets for adults are $30 plus $1.75 fee for musicals, and $25 plus $1.75 fee for non-musicals. Student tickets (ages 21 and younger with a student ID) are $25 plus $1.75 fee for musicals, and $20 plus $1.75 fee for non-musicals. Student ID and proof of age must be presented at the box office upon entry.

Student rush tickets (ages 21 and younger with a student ID) are $15 plus $1.75 fee. If available, these tickets may be purchased at the door 15 minutes before a performance.

Season tickets are $120 plus $8.75 fee.

Tickets can be purchased on line at flaglerplayhouse.com, by calling the box office at 386-586-0773, or at the box office. Box office hours are 8 a.m.-noon Monday, 3-7 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, and just prior to show time. Tickets must be paid for at time of purchase.




For more information, see the website or call the business office at 386-313-5876.

Here’s the 2022-23 season schedule. Dates given are the opening and closing performances.

* “Oliver!” – Sept. 23-Oct. 9. (the concluding Oct. 9 show is at 3 p.m.). British composer-writer Lionel Bart, who wrote the book, music and lyrics for “Oliver!,” based his 1960 play on the 1838 novel “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens. The tale follows the hardscrabble life of the orphan Oliver in Victorian London. After he’s expelled from a workhouse for asking for more food, Oliver falls in with a band of boy pickpockets led by the elderly Fagin and his sinister, seedy associate Bill Sikes. But Mr. Brownlow, a kindly, wealthy old gentleman who crosses paths with Oliver, may lead to the orphan’s salvation.

“Oliver!,” which opened on Broadway in 1963 and won the Tony Award for Best Original Score, is known for such songs as “Food, Glorious Food,” “Consider Yourself,” “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two” and “I’d Do Anything.”

* “Driving Miss Daisy” – Nov. 4-13. Alfred Uhry’s gentle drama follows the relationship of an elderly Southern Jewish woman and her African-American chauffeur from 1948 to 1973. The play won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

* “Rent” – Jan. 20-Feb. 5, 2023. “Rent” creator Jonathan Larson, who wrote the music, lyrics and book, loosely based his 1993 rock musical on Puccini’s 1896 opera “La Bohème.” The play tells the story of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create in Lower Manhattan’s East Village under the shadow of the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Larson died suddenly from an undiagnosed health condition the night before “Rent” officially opened off-Broadway in 1996. After moving to Broadway later that year, “Rent” won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Musical. The Broadway production ran for 12 years, making it currently the 11^th longest-running play in Broadway history.




* “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” — March 3-12. Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, adapted for the stage by Dale Wasserman, tells the story of McMurphy, who contrives to serve his brief sentence for a petty crime in what he believes will be a cushy mental institution rather than in prison. But McMurphy’s plan goes awry when he comes under the supervision of the mental hospital’s dictatorial, combative Nurse Ratched, even as he leads his fellow inmates to flaunt the rules with rebellious parties and other shenanigans.

* “Barnum” — April 21-May 7. This 1980 musical, with book by Mark Bramble, lyrics by Michael Stewart and music by Cy Coleman, follows the life of show-biz impresario P. T. Barnum, who in the mid-1800s dubbed the circus he co-created “the greatest show on earth.”