Stephen Bogardus, Anastasia Barzee and More Set for ONE FOR MY BABY Workshop, 10/10-12

Tony Nominee Stephen Bogardus (Falsettos, Love! Valor! Compassion!) Luba Mason (Chicago, How to Succeed), Anastasia Barzee (Jekyll & Hyde, Miss Saigon) and 25 others have joined two-time Tony Nominee Vivian Reed (Bubbling Brown Sugar, Marie Christine) in the workshop cast of One for My Baby, the new book musical with a Harold Arlen score.

Bogardus plays the brusque business partner of Reed’s self-proclaimed “queen of the nightclubs,” Panama Jones, as they fight to preserve their post-World War II nightclub world that is threatened by underworld figures and the changing habits of high society.

Mason takes on the role of a glamorous society woman trapped in a romantic triangle that includes her new infatuation, played by Damon Kirsche (Encores! Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, Strike Up the Band), and her devious best friend, played by Barzee.

Broadway performers Jennifer Cody (Shrek, The Pajama Game, Grease), Robert Hartwell (Nice Work if You Can Get It), Todd Lawson (Summer and Smoke), Matt Loehr (Movin’ Out, Mary Poppins), Jenelle Lynn Randall (All Shook Up), Michael Scott (110 in the Shade, Follies) and Julie Tolivar (Curtains, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) fill out the principal parts.

Loehr plays a talented song-and-dance man plagued by unrequited feelings for his ambitious childhood sweetheart and dance partner, played by Tolivar. Randall plays Panama Jones’s spitfire niece, Jackie, whose husband, Keith, a compulsive gambler, is played by Hartwell. Cody’s role is Ethel, a tough-talking cigarette girl with a full heart but an empty date book. Scott is the corrupt Detective Laretta and Lawson is Joe, the bartender, as in “So, set ‘em up, Joe” of the title song.

An ensemble of 17 dancer/singers completes the cast; included are: Richard Byron, Sean Ewing, Nick Kepley, Brandon Leffler, Jeff Legace, Nathan Lucrezio, Alicia Lundgren, Brittany Marcin, Sarah Meahl, Jessica Osborne, Pamela Otterson, Lindsay Roginski, Brandon Rubendall, Ashley Anne Russ, Steve Schepis, Britton Smith, and Elisa Van Duyne .

Besides the title song [“One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)”], the swinging score of One for My Baby features such other Arlen classics as “Stormy Weather,” “Get Happy,” “The Man that Got Away,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” “Accentuate the Positive,” “That Old Black Magic” and “Blues in the Night.” Fellow composer George Gershwin said of Arlen, “He’s the most original of all of us.”

Invitation-only performances will be presented October 10-12 at New 42nd Street Studios.

One for My Baby’s multi-award-winning director and choreographer, Scott Thompson, co-wrote the show’s original book with Fred Barton, who also provides the musical arrangementS. Thompson has directed and choreographed some of Broadway’s brightest stars in more than 100 productions nationwide, and founded the Austin Musical Theatre, where he served as producing artistic director for eight seasons. Barton, who has worked with Thompson for almost 25 years and on 20 productions, has numerous credits as television composer, lyricist, book writer and music director.

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