The LA Reprise! Broadway's Best staged concert production of the comic noir musical City of Angels will co-star Stephen Bogardus and Burke Moses. The musical, which features music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by David Zippel and a book by Larry Gelbart, will run at UCLA's Freud Playhouse from January 24th through February 5th; it will open on January 25th.
Directed by Joe Leonardo and choreographed by Kay Cole, City of Angels will feature Tony Award-nominee Bogardus (Man of La Mancha, Falsettos, Love! Valour! Compassion!) as screenwriter Stine and Moses (The Frogs, Kiss Me, Kate) as Stine's fictional alter ego Stone, a hard-boiled detective faced with a pair of mother and daughter femme fatales.
The production will also boast Tami Tappan Damiano as Gabby/Bobbi, Kevin Earley (Thoroughly Modern Millie) as Jimmy Powers, Vicki
Lewis (Chicago, Damn Yankees) as Donna/Oolie, Alli Mauzey as Mallory/Avril, Daniel
Guzman as Munoz, Marguerite MacIntyre as Alaura/Carla and Michael
Lerner as Buddy Fidler. The ensemble will consist of Stephen Breithaupt, Randy Brenner, Eric Leviton, Wes Ramsey, Teresa
Marie Sanchez, Brent Schindele, Joe Souza, Herschel Sparber, Anne
Fraser Thomas and Freyda Thomas.
According to press notes, the show spoofs "the private eye movies of the 1940's. The story follows Stine, a
fiction writer in Hollywood trying to adapt his own detective novel
into a screenplay. As the action begins, we meet Stone, Stine's
detective, in the hospital with a bullet wound. As Stone relates the
story of his injury, Stine begins to rewrite his story. As he rewrites,
the 'movie' is rewound and the actors move and speak backwards. As
Stine buries himself in the fantasy world of his detective story,
however, his personal life begins to fall apart. When his wife leaves
him, he must make some decisions about what is really important in his
life." The original Broadway production of City of Angels, which opened on December 11th, 1989 at the Virginia Theatre, ran for 879 performances. Starring Gregg Edelman, James Naughton, Randy Graff and others, it received the 1990 Tony Award for Best Musical, among others.
The Reprise! staging of City of Angels will also feature sets by Brad Kay, lighting by Tom Ruzika, sound by Phil Allen and costumes by Alex Jaeger.
City of Angel's performance schedule is: Tuesday-Friday evenings at 8 PM, Saturdays at 2 and 8 PM and
Sundays at 2 and 7 PM. Tickets, which range from $60-$75, can be ordered by
calling (310) 825-2101 or by visiting www.reprise.org.