Jim Dale to Return to Broadway in Spring '06 Threepenny Opera

The New York Times reports that Tony-winner Jim Dale will return to Broadway after an absence of nine years to star as Mr. Peachum in the Roundabout production of Threepenny Opera. Dale will appear alongside Tony award winning Alan Cumming as "Macheath," Emmy and Golden Globe award winning Edie Falco as "Jenny" and Nellie McKay as "Polly" in a new Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera, directed by Scott Elliott on Broadway at Studio 54. Roundabout Theatre Company has commissioned Wallace Shawn to translate and adapt the original German book and lyrics for the production.

Performances for the limited engagement will begin in April 2006, and additional casting is expected to be announced shortly.

On Broadway, Jim Dale is probably most known for creating the title role in the Cy Coleman musical "Barnum", winning him the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award. His other Broadway apperances include Scapino (Drama Desk Award/ Outer Critics Award / Tony nomination). Other credits on and Off-Broadway include, Joe Egg, (Outer Critics Award / Tony nomination). Travels With My Aunt, (Drama Desk Award / Outer Critics Award / Lucille Lortel Award) Candide (Tony Nomination), The Comedians, (Lucille Lortel Nomination) The Invisible Man, Privates On Parade, The Taming of the Shrew, Me And My Girl , A Christmas Carol - The Musical, The Music Man and Address Unknown.

Some of the star's many West End credits include The Burglar, The Wayward Way, The Card, A Midsummer Nights Dream, A Winters' Tale, and most recently, the part of Fagin in Cameron Mackintosh's Oliver! at the London Palladium. He is also the narrator of the American Harry Potter audiobooks, and also the Harry Potter DVDs.

The Threepenny Opera serves up a deliciously dark satire of "respectable" society, with dashing thieves, saucy prostitutes, and lingering melodies. Based on Elizabeth Hauptmann's German translation of John Gay's eighteenth-century The Beggar's Opera , The Threepenny Opera thrusts the audience into the seedy underworld of Mack the Knife, a dapper criminal and his wry love affair with Polly Peachum.

Scott Elliott is an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company. For the Roundabout Theatre Company, he has directed Chekhov's Three Sisters and Clare Boothe Luce's The Women.

The Threepenny Opera premiered on Broadway at the Empire Theatre on April 13, 1933. The last Broadway revival began at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 5th, 1989.

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