Celebrate St. James presented a musical comedy about the wonderful history of our town in the last two centuries to educate and entertain our residents.  The show was titled, “99 Minutes from Broadway – a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to St. James.”   The opening of the show was a tableau of William Sydney Mount, an American genre painter who lived and painted in in our local community.  The show also told the story of many famous vaudevillians, politicians, and others who once either lived or summered in St. James. They traveled to our town on the Long Island Railroad, arriving at our historical station, a ride which was only “99 Minutes from Broadway.”  The show also featured many beautiful backdrops which displayed our historical General Store, Long Island Railroad Station, and Deepwells Mansion.  One scene featured many of the famous historical guests at a dinner party at Deepwells  Mansion, hosted by Mayor Gaynor and his wife Augusta.  Other scenes from the twentieth century featured Walter Winchell telling the story of Harry De Leyer and the famous plow horse, Snowman, a rags to riches story of becoming an award winning and triple crown jumper, and Hedda Hopper telling the story of Irving Berlin who wrote some of his famous songs at Camp Upton in Yaphank, a town only 17 miles from St. James. The finale of the show was a rousing rendition of one of Berlin’s most famous songs, “God Bless America,” with the audience joining in!

The show was performed on October 13 and 14th at the Nesaquake Middle School Theater in St. James, and each performance played to a full house.  The show is memorialized on a DVD and the accompanying playbill, a history lesson about the real people and historic locations depicted in the play.