Jenni Barber, Andrea Burns and Cady Huffman Join THE NANCE; Casting Complete!

Lincoln Center Theater has announced that Jenni Barber, Andrèa Burns and Cady Huffman will join Nathan Lane, Jonny Orsini and Lewis J. Stadlen in its upcoming production of The Nance, a new play by Douglas Carter Beane to be directed by Jack O'Brien. The production will begin previews on Thursday, March 21 and open on Monday, April 15 at the Lyceum Theatre (149 West 45 Street).

A nance, according to Webster's Dictionary, is "an effeminate or homosexual man." In the world of 1930's burlesque, a nance was a wildly popular character, a stereotypically camp homosexual man, usually played by a straight performer. In The Nance, playwright Douglas Carter Beane tells the story of Chauncey Miles (Nathan Lane), a headline nance performer in New York burlesque, who also happens to be homosexual. Integrating burlesque sketches into his drama, Beane paints, with humor and pathos, the portrait of a homosexual man, living and working in the secretive and dangerous gay world of 1930's New York, whose outrageous antics on the burlesque stage stand in marked contrast to his messy offstage life.

THE NANCE will have sets by John Lee Beatty, costumes by Ann Roth, lighting by Japhy Weideman, sound by Leon Rothenberg, original music and arrangements by Glen Kelly, orchestrations by Larry Blank and choreography by Joey Pizzi.

Douglas Carter Beane's plays include The Little Dog Laughed, As Bees In Honey Drown, Mr. & Mrs. Fitch, Music From A Sparkling Planet, The Country Club, Advice From A Caterpiller and The Cartells. He received Tony Award nominations for his books for the musicals Xanadu (for which he won a Drama Desk Award), Sister Act and Lysistrata Jones. He also wrote the book for the current new stage version of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella.

Jack O'Brien won Tony Awards for his direction of the LCT productions of The Coast of Utopia and Henry IV. His other LCT productions include The Invention of Love, Pride's Crossing, The Little Foxes, Hapgood (Lucille Lortel Award) and Two Shakespearean Actors. His many Broadway productions include Catch Me If You Can, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Hairspray (Tony Award), The Full Monty and Damn Yankees. He staged the Metropolitan Opera's recent production of Il Trittico. In London, he directed Love Never Dies and Hairspray in the West End and His Girl Friday at The National Theatre. He was Artistic Director of San Diego's Old Globe Theatre from 1981 to 2007.

This spring Lincoln Center Theater is also producing Richard Nelson's new play Nikolai and the Others, directed by David Cromer, beginning Thursday, April 4 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and the LCT3 productions of Luck of the Irish by Kirsten Greenidge, directed by Rebecca Taichman (currently through March 10) and A Kid Like Jake by Daniel Pearle, directed by Evan Cabnet (June 2 - July 14), both at the Claire Tow Theater.

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