Andrea McArdle to Take on 'Auntie Mame' Twice This Spring!

According to an Equity casting notice, Broadway veteran Andrea McArdle will take on the title role in MAME twice this spring. The show will play at Pennsylvania's Media Theatre (4/17- 5/19) and then again at the Bucks County Playhouse (5/22-6/9).

As "Annie," McArdle became the youngest performer ever to be nominated for a Tony Award as Best Lead Actress in a Musical. Also on Broadway, she starred in the Jerry Herman musical Jerry's Girls alongside Carol Channing and Leslie Uggams; she portrayed the sassy Smoking Car, Ashley, in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express; and starred as Margy Frake in State Fair; as Fantine in Les Miserables and, most recently as Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

Mame is a musical with the book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. Originally titled My Best Girl, it is based on the 1955 novel Auntie Mame by PatRick Dennis and a 1956 Broadway play, by Lawrence and Lee, that starred Rosalind Russell. Set in New York and spanning the Great Depression and World War II, it focuses on eccentric bohemian, Mame Dennis, whose famous motto is "Life is a banquet and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death."

In 1958, a film titled Auntie Mame, based on the play, was released by Warner Brothers once again starring Rosalind Russell in the title role. Russell was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for her portrayal. The musical opened on Broadway in 1966, starring Angela Lansbury and Beatrice Arthur. The production became a hit and spawned a 1974 film with Lucille Ball in the title role and Arthur reprising her supporting role, as well as a London production, a Broadway revival, and a 40th anniversary revival at the Kennedy Center in 2006.

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