Colella, Von Essen & More Set for BAREFOOT BOY WITH CHEEK Reading

UnsungMusicalsCo. Inc. has announced additional casting for its special exploratory reading of the 1947 musical comedy Barefoot Boy With Cheek on January 14 at 3pm at Manhattan Theatre Club's Creative Center, 311 West 43rd Street. The reading will launch a new UMC initiative, The Archival Project, aimed at researching, assembling and restoring unpublished and out-of-print musical shows.
 
Jenn Colella (High Fidelity, Urban Cowboy), RAndy Donaldson (Wonderful Town), Jenny Fellner (Pal Joey, Wicked, Mamma Mia!), Drew Gehling (Jersey Boys), Anne Horak (White Christmas), Rye Mullis (Young Frankenstein) and Max Von Essen (Les Miserables, Xanadu) join previously announced cast members Sarah Litzsinger (Amour, Beauty and the Beast) and Nora Mae Lyng (Into the Woods, Cabaret, My Favorite Year). Fred Berman and Oliver Vaquer have withdrawn due to scheduling conflicts; additional casting to be announced.
 
A nutty 1947 musical romp, Barefoot Boy With Cheek follows a bright-eyed young freshman at the fictitious University of Minnesota as he navigates a rowdy campus complete with swindling frat boys, dreamy jocks and communist coeds.
 
Based on the best-selling novel by Tony Award nominee Max Shulman (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis), the musical has a book by Mr. Shulman, music by Sidney Lippman ("Too Young", "A...You're Adorable") and lyrics by Sylvia Dee ("Chickery Chick", "The End of the World"). UMC artistic director Ben West (Platinum, How Now, Dow Jones) will direct the reading. Fran Minarik (How Now, Dow Jones, Xanadu) provides new musical arrangements from Mr. Lippman's original score. The reading restores Mr. Shulman's original libretto as well as the originally penned act one finale, "Don't Spoil the Party", which was cut in 1947 during the musical's development.
 
To attend the reading and receive invites to future UMC readings, sign-up at www.UnsungMusicals.org. UMC's Archival Project will present a reading of its next restoration in May 2011.
 
The original Broadway production of Barefoot Boy With Cheek opened on April 3, 1947 at the Martin Beck Theatre where it set a house record for box office gross in its first full week of performances ($34,232). Produced and directed by George Abbott, the musical starred Nancy Walker, Red Buttons, Billy Redfield and Ellen Hanley. It received favorable reviews, particularly for its pre-Broadway engagement in Boston, and played 108 performances. Hanley won a Theatre World Award for her debut.
 
UMC is creating The Archival Project with the aim of researching, assembling and restoring both librettos and scores from past musical productions. The collection of these historic works will further our mission of preserving musical theatre for future generations. Many Golden Age musicals have gone unpublished while others that were once published have since gone out of print. The material for these shows is often difficult, if not impossible, to find, leaving several extraordinary musical works unproduced and forgotten. The Archival Project seeks to create a resource of complete musical material so that the works of the past will have the opportunity to inspire, influence and entertain the artists and audiences of the future.
 
Max Shulman was a novelist, playwright and humorist whose many books include Barefoot Boy With Cheek, The Feather Merchants, The Zebra Derby, Sleep Till Noon, Anyone Got a Match?, Potatoes Are Cheaper and Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, which was made into a film starring Paul Newman and JoAnne Woodward. In 1945, he began writing Dobie Gillis stories for humor magazines. They would later be published collectively as The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which was followed by a hit television series of the same name and the Dobie Gillis novel I Was a Teenage Dwarf. His other Broadway credits include the play The Tender Trap and the musical How Now, Dow Jones for which he received a Tony Award nomination.
 
Sidney Lippman composed the Nat King Cole hit "Too Young" which was the top song on "Your Hit Parade" 12 times. His other popular songs include the Perry Como hit "A...You're Adorable", "Chickery Chick", "I'd Forgotten", "I'm Thrilled", "It Couldn't Be True" and "A House With Love in It". Barefoot Boy With Cheek was his only Broadway musical.
 
Sylvia Dee wrote the Skeeter Davis hit "The End of the World". Her other popular songs include Nat King Cole's "Too Young", "Chickery Chick", Ella Fitzgerald's "I Taught Him Everything He Knows", "I'd Forgotten", "My Sugar is So Refined", "It Couldn't Be True", "Stardreams", "Have You Changed", "I'm Thrilled", "A House With Love in It" and "Moonlight Swim". She also wrote songs for the Elvis Presley films Blue Hawaii and Speedway. Barefoot Boy With Cheek was her only Broadway musical.
 
UNSUNGMUSICALSCO. INC. (Ben West, Artistic Director) is a not-for-profit Production Company dedicated to the preservation of musical theatre through the presentation of infrequently performed works. Focusing primarily on overlooked projects from the Golden Age, both hits and substantive misses, UMC treats each property as a new musical thereby providing a unique collaboration between the artists of today and those of the past. www.UnsungMusicals.org

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos