Connecticut: A Weekend of Theatre







Travel through Connecticut for Memorial Day weekend for a tour of the arts.  This tour includes: roundtrip private motorcoach, 3 nights accomodations at The Hartford Hilton, 3 breakfasts, lunches and dinners, 3 performances and tours of 7 different museums.  



Join us for the Memorial Day holiday in our lovely New England neighbor, Connecticut, for an in-depth spring tour of the arts.  We travel from the expansive coastline along the Connecticut River and through the verdant valleys of one of our country's most beautiful landscapes, exploring the state's rich cultural heritage.  Our focus is on exciting regional theater and we see three performances:  a world premiere of Terms of Endearment at the Hartford Stage Company, a stage adaptation of Singin' In the Rain at the Goodspeed Opera House, and a new production of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya at the Long Wharf Theatre.  We also explore Connecticut's rich literary and theatrical history as we visit the homes of Eugene O'Neill, Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe as well as William Gillette's "Castle."  Along the way we visit the impressive art collections at several of New England's finest art museums, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Florence Griswold Museum and the Yale University Gallery of Art.






1.  Friday, May 25     Yale University Gallery of Art/Hartford Stage Company
We depart from midtown Manhattan in the morning traveling by private motor coach to New Haven where we begin our cultural exploration with a tour of the Yale University Gallery of Art, one of New England's finest art museums, opened in 1832.  The collections and exhibits span history from ancient Egypt to the present, and feature over 100,000 objects.  Visitors enjoy dozens of classic, well-known artists, including works by Van Gogh, Manet, Monet and Picasso.  The recent comprehensive restoration of its landmark main building, designed by American architect Louis I. Kahn commences a new chapter in its life looking just as pure as it did when it was first constructed in 1953.  After lunch (included) there is free time to stroll the Yale Campus or to visit the Yale Center for British Art, an extensive and first-rate collection situated across the street from the Yale Gallery of Art.    
 
We continue to Hartford where we spend three nights at the newly refurbished Hartford Hilton, in the heart of the city.  After our welcome dinner we have tickets for a world premiere production at the Hartford Stage Company.  Tonight we see a performance of Terms of Endearment, based upon the novel by Larry McMurtry.  First there was the best-selling novel and then came the celebrated film.  Now Hartford Stage produces the world premiere of the stage version of this contemporary classic.  (L) (D)  



2.  Saturday, May 26     Gillette Castle/Monte Cristo Cottage/Goodspeed Opera
Today is a journey through American theatrical and art history.  We depart in the morning by private motor coach for East Haddam to visit the medieval inspired Gillette "Castle," located on a bluff overlooking the Connecticut River.  Designed and built in 1919 by the legendary early 20th century actor, William Hooker Gillette, the castle is one of Connecticut's leading attractions.  Gillette was the first person to portray Sherlock Holmes on stage, and no one, except Arthur Conan Doyle himself, has had as great an impact on the Sherlock Holmes legend.  Gillette established the theatrical model followed by every actor who has subsequently portrayed Holmes.  The rather eccentric Gillette first spotted the location where he would build his castle while on a boat trip up the Connecticut River.    
 
We continue to New London on the Long Island Sound for a visit to Monte Cristo Cottage, the summer boyhood home of Eugene O'Neill, Nobel Prize winner and one of America's greatest dramatists.  His father James O'Neill, a famous actor in the late 19th century, purchased the property in 1884 with money he earned playing the title role in The Count of Monte Cristo, hence the cottage's name.  Both Eugene O'Neill's great play, Long Day's Journey into Night, as well as his only comedy, Ah, Wilderness!, are set in this home.   The stage directions for Long Day's Journey into Night are site specific, and visitors to this haunting house have the vivid, eerie and memorable experience of stepping inside one of our nation's outstanding dramas.    
 
Next we stop in the charming shoreline town of Old Lyme.  After free time for lunch on our own, we visit the Florence Griswold Museum, a National Historic Landmark with gardens, riverfront gallery and renowned American art collection.  Nearly a century ago the allure of the Connecticut countryside inspired a group of well-known artists who came here to paint it.   At Florence Griswold's boarding house, they created an art colony that played a pivotal role in the rise of American Impressionism. The house, an architectural treasure, remains much the same today as it was at the turn of the century. A new museum on site presents the collection of important American Impressionist painting.  
 
This evening we have dinner and attend a performance of Singin' in the Rain at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam.   This adaptation of the 1952 MGM musical film offers a comic depiction of Hollywood's transition from silent films to "talkies."  The movie is frequently described as one of the best movie musicals ever made.  Formed in 1959 the Goodspeed pioneered the practice of rethinking, restoring and revitalizing America's musical theatre heritage, and as such it is the ideal venue for this production.  Under the direction of Michael P. Price since 1968, the Goodspeed has achieved international acclaim as the home of musical theatre and is at the forefront of shaping its future.  After the performance we return by motor coach to Hartford and our hotel.   (B) (D)  



3.  Sunday, May 27     Wadsworth Atheneum/Long Wharf Theatre
We have a morning tour of the Wadsworth Atheneum, America's oldest public art museum, which continues to thrive and collect and share the world's greatest art.  The best show in town, and the region for that matter, is the permanent collection of more than 45,000 works of art.  Many fine paintings collected by Wadsworth from the Hudson River School are now considered masterpieces of American art, and are one of the highlights of any Wadsworth visit.    
 
After lunch we travel to New Haven for a matinee performance at the Long Wharf Theatre of Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov.  Adapted and directed by Gordon Edelstein, it is a classic story of a family estate brought to the brink of ruin at the arrival of an ailing professor and his exquisitely beautiful wife.  Uncle Vanya is a captivating exploration of the human condition, and a wickedly comic romance immersed in unrequited love and extraordinary tenderness.  We return to Hartford where we have dinner.  (B) (L) (D)  



4.  Monday, May 28     Mark Twain House and Harriet Beecher Stowe House
We visit two historic homes in Hartford, The Mark Twain House and Museum and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and Museum.  Mark Twain and his family enjoyed what the author would later call the happiest and most productive years of his life (1874-1891) in this Hartford home.  Twain wrote: "To us, our house…..had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies."  The custom-designed, High Victorian, nineteen-room mansion features an interior designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany (one of only two such Tiffany interiors remaining in the United States).   It was here that Twain wrote Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee and The Prince and The Pauper.   The new museum - opened in November 2003 - provides the richest possible treasury of Twain's triumphs and tragedies and of his contemporaries and the Gilded Age.  For a penetrating look at Twain's notable peers, period influences, and enduring legacy, we visit the gallery to see rare manuscripts, photos, artifacts, fine and decorative arts never before on display.    
 
Directly across the street is the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and Museum.  In 1873 Harriet Beecher Stowe purchased the painted brick "cottage" on Forest Street.  Modest by the standards of the Nook Farm neighborhood, the house contains 17 rooms and halls.  The gardens surrounding the house reflect Stowe's fondness for and knowledge of the plantings of the Victorian era.  Stowe lived in the house until her death in 1896.  Best known for writing Uncle Tom's Cabin, the novel that gained her international fame, Stowe wrote more than thirty other books.  During the last half of the 19th century, Stowe was the most widely read American author in Europe and Asia.  Her works have been translated into more that sixty languages.  Following lunch we return to New York City.  (B) (L)  





This engaging experience includes:

  • Round-trip private motor-coach from New York City.
  • 3 nights' accommodations at the Hartford Hilton.
  • 3 breakfasts, 3 lunches, 3 dinners
  • 3 performances at: Hartford Stage, Long Wharf Theatre and Goodspeed Opera House
  • Tours of: Yale University Art Gallery, Wadsworth Atheneum, Mark Twain House, Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Eugene O'Neill Monte Christo Cottage, Gillette Castle, Florence Griswold Museum
PROGRAM PRICES  
Per person (double occupancy) from New York: $1,395.00  
Single Supplement: $175.00