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| Old Maid, 1950 Right: Jere Heinze |
When the curtain rose in 1949 on the Allenberry Playhouse premiere production Life with Father, five-year-old Jere Heinze initiated a Heinze family tradition with his portrayal of Harlan. Since that first production, four generations of the Heinze family have participated in almost eighty Playhouse presentations. Jere was fondly known as Mr. Gage’s “Good Luck Charm,” appearing in I Remember Mama, The Old Maid, Our Town, King of Hearts, The Seven Year Itch, George Washington Slept Here, and The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker.
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| Life With Mother, 1982 Charles A.B. Heinze II |
Not to be outdone by his Dad, Jere’s son, Charles A.B. Heinze II, who started his career in The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker at the age of six, appeared two years later as Harlan in Life with Mother. Charles continued in a variety of roles over his young years, including Life with Father, The King and I, The Music Man and Annie. Family matriarch Mary Lucinda Heinze was seen briefly as a wedding guest in Our Town (1951), her only stage appearance.
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| The Music Man, 1983 Seated L to R: Cricket Heinze, Jackie Heinze, Charles A.B. Heinze II, Margaretta Heinze Taylor, Jennifer Heinze. Back row 2nd from right: John Heinze |
Of the “blond little granddaughters,” Margaretta, daughter of Jane Heinze, has been seen in the greatest number of shows. Her beautiful soprano voice complemented many summer musicals including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Student Prince, Pirates of Penzance, Gigi, and Camelot. Jane Heinze, most notably and warmly known to Allenberry audiences as official host and greeter, has also trod the Playhouse boards as a performer in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Come Blow Your Horn, and Strange Bedfellows. Her best known character is Myrtle in three productions of the marvelous farce, Ladies’ Night in a Turkish Bath. MaryAnne Taylor Murtoff and brother Allen upheld the tradition — Allen as Sonny in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1973), with MaryAnne’s credits including South Pacific, Merry Widow and Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
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| The Student Prince, 1988 Margaretta Heinze Taylor |
Not to be left out were the cousins: Cricket, Jackie and Jennifer. They played “real children” in Sound of Music, The Music Man, The King and I, and Annie. Sharon Johnson (Patriot–News 8/9/84) noted “The charm of the youngsters who appear in the Allenberry production is that they are real children, and they are uniformly wonderful.”
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| Our Town, 1951 Far L: Jere, Far R: John, Back row center: Mary Lucinda |
John Heinze, Playhouse producer, and his wife, Kathy, also followed the tradition. Kathy played the ingenue in Beekman Place (1965) with Bettie Endrizzi and Jim Oyster. John has enjoyed a history of exciting roles from a dead body in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, to a policeman in Pirates of Penzance, and a cigar smoking poker player in The Odd Couple.
“John Heinze appeared to be having a good time, and YES, he remembered all his lines,” reviewed the Carlisle Sentinel. John’s all-time favorite role? The bang, beat, bell-ringing salesman in The Music Man.
Four generations later, the great granddaughters of Charles and Mary Lu Heinze, Mary Elizabeth and Emily Murtoff, were seen happily romping in the first holiday production of Christmas on Angel Street.
Martie Kunkel, Theatre Topics (7/80)
There are five of us cousins — the “Heinze Brat Pack” — who grew up together on the Allenberry stage from the mid-seventies into the early nineties experiencing the glory of the theater that blessed our childhood. As children, we brought our innocence, fearlessness, and need to play and laugh to the stage. We entered various fantasy worlds in which we became orphans, or the famous Von Trapps, or the children of the King of Siam, or Pennsylvania Amish, or Argentineans under Peron’s rule. Without knowing it, we were introduced to other time periods and other cultures.
We were also introduced to remarkable people: professional actors from New York who had been in the business for years; young junior staffers who would work long, grueling hours in pursuit of their dream; and locals who loved exercising and displaying their talent right in their own community. We learned about the dedication it takes to make it in the arts.
We saw first hand that sometimes people with remarkable talent did not know what their next job would be. We quickly figured out that sometimes it wasn’t all play, and that struggle is inherent to aspiring towards your goals.
We were moved and changed by these high energy, uninhibited, exciting outsiders who came to Allenberry for a few short months before returning to their “regular” lives when the season ended. Some of these actors, who affected our lives deeply, disappeared after one summer, and many have remained in our lives forever.
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| The Miracle Worker, 1988 Jackie Heinze as Helen Keller |
Every Christmas Eve, when the Heinze cousins are brought back together at Allenberry, we sing and dance, revisiting all of our favorite numbers from musicals of summers past. If we had indeed gained nothing else, we did receive a bottomless reservoir of fun memories with which to wax silly and nostalgic.
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| Fiddler on the Roof, 1985 L: Jackie Heinze R: Cricket Heinze |
4/27/89
Musical summers and Jackie’s “passion for acting” blended in the spring of 1987 when she played Pippa in Agatha Christie‘s The Spider‘s Web. 1988 featured a starring role in The Miracle Worker. Her portrayal of Helen Keller was astonishing. In her review Sharon Johnson stated, “This assured and deeply moving performance could not have been predicted. In a physically and emotionally challenging role, the actress, with apparent ease, lets the audience sense the probing mind and dauntless spirit of this sightless child.” (Patriot–News 7/1/88)
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| The Diary of Anne Frank, 1989 Jackie Heinze as Anne Frank |
Working again under the direction of Michael Rothhaar, the young actress went on to star in the 1989 production of The Diary of Anne Frank, recreating the acting relationship with actress Nancy Linehan Charles. This was followed with another collaboration in Neil Simon‘s The Gingerbread Lady.
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| Plain and Fancy, 1986 Far left: Jennifer Heinze |
Babe, in Crimes of the Heart, Jackie‘s most recent Allenberry role, was presented to audiences in 1995. Since graduating from Northwestern University Jackie has been seen in the 1997 film Addicted to Love starring Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick and recently starred in the independent film Old Greenwich.