Starlight Theatre Presents XANADU, 8/15-21

By: Aug. 05, 2011
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It's time to dig through Kansas City closets for leg warmers and disco balls! Starlight Theatre's production of Xanadu, the final show of the 2011 Broadway season, is ready to light up the Starlight stage (with neon!) on Aug. 15-21.

For Starlight audiences, the show promises to be the next best thing to seeing it on Broadway. The company features numerous performers who starred in Xanadu's Broadway and national touring productions. And the Broadway production's Tony Award®-nominated choreographer, Dan Knechtges, is both directing and choreographing the show at Starlight.

A musical adventure on roller skates, the stage production of Xanadu is billed as an outlandishly enjoyable spoof of the 1980 Universal Pictures film that starred Olivia Newton-John, Michael Beck and Gene Kelly. It follows the story of Sonny Malone, a chalk artist in Venice Beach, Calif., and the Greek Muse Clio/Kira who inspires him to new artistic heights: the creation of a roller disco.

Xanadu ran on Broadway from May 2007 through September 2008, notching 49 previews, 513 performances and four 2008 Tony Award nominations. It won an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Musical and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical (Douglas Carter Beane).

"I like to give Starlight audiences a little something unexpected and unabashedly fun each summer," said Denton Yockey, Starlight president and executive producer. "In Xanadu, they'll enjoy a ‘delicious dessert' as the final course on our 2011 Broadway season menu."

Despite the frivolity of the show's subject matter, the credentials of the professionals leading Starlight's production are anything but lightweight. In addition to his Tony nod for choreographing the Broadway production, director/choreographer Dan Knechtges' Broadway credits include Sondheim on Sondheim, 110 in the Shade starring Audra McDonald and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. This November, the new musical comedy Knechtges' directed and choreographed, Lysistrata Jones, will follow up its critically acclaimed off-Broadway run with a Broadway debut at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

Leading the cast are Elizabeth Stanley as Clio/Kira and Darren Ritchie as Sonny Malone. Stanley, fresh from originating the role of Dyanne in Broadway's rock-n-roll musical Million Dollar Quartet, also counts leading-lady credits in Broadway's run of Cry-Baby and the Tony Award-winning revival of Company; she also starred in the 2009-10 national tour of Xanadu. Ritchie most recently starred as the White Knight/Jack in the new Broadway musical Wonderland; his other Broadway credits include Little Shop of Horrors, Dracula, Bells are Ringing, Les Misérables and Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Other principal actors in the Starlight cast include Xanadu Broadway veterans Annie Golden as Calliope/Aphrodite, Curtis Holbrook as Thalia/Siren/'80s Singer/Cyclops, Patti Murin as Euterpe/Siren/'40s Singer/Thetis, and Kenita R. Miller as Erato/Siren/'40s Singer/Hera. Golden and Miller also toured with Xanadu after its Broadway run, as did Starlight cast member Julius Thomas III. The cast also features Alix Korey (Melpomene/Medusa), whose numerous Broadway credits include All Shook Up, Chicago and Neil Simon's 45 Seconds from Broadway; and Brett Stang, who appeared in Xanadu in 2008 at San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse, as the Featured Skater.

Kansas City actor Kip Niven stars as Danny Maguire and Zeus. Niven's local, Broadway, off-Broadway, film and television credits are numerous. At Starlight, he appeared last month in Cinderella and has also been in the casts of Anything Goes, Annie, The Wizard of Oz and Phantom in recent Starlight seasons.

Finally, 17 Kansas City teens from 12 area high schools perform in Xanadu as members of Starlight's Blue Star All-Star Chorus.

Tickets for Xanadu at Starlight Theatre are on sale now for $10 to $85. Tickets are available online at www.kcstarlight.com, by calling 816.363.STAR (7827) or at the Starlight box office at 4600 Starlight Road, Kansas City, MO 64132. All performances begin at 8 p.m.

Discount prices for groups of 15 or more are available. For information about group pricing, contact group sales manager Felicia Goodison at 816.997.1137 or felicia.goodison@kcstarlight.com.

 



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