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Gifford's Hurricane Aimee Premieres on Oct. 14

By: Jun. 15, 2005
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Kathie Lee Gifford's new musical Hurricane Aimee will premiere at the White Plains Performing Arts Center this fall. The show, which features a book and lyrics by the former talk show queen as well as music by David Pomeranz and additional music by Gifford and David Friedman, will start performances on October 14th for a 10-day run.

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Hurricane Aimee is about the fiery evangelist of the title--Aimee Semple McPherson. McPherson, who both spiritually enraptured and scandalized the public in the 1920's and 30's, was also the basis of the character Reno Sweeney in Cole Porter's Anything Goes. "This will be the culmination of a 30-year fascination with McPherson and 6 years of struggling to write and rewrite her story," stated Gifford on her official website. "We have an absolutely brilliant cast of Broadway veterans and we're all eager to get Aimee up before an audience."

The creators have been preparing the piece for audiences for some time in a series of readings. In May of 2004, Eric Schaeffer directed Carolee Carmello as the colorful Christian, and Christine Ebersole was also involved in a private reading in 2003. The musical will be structurally framed around her trial (on charges of corruption of morals, conspiracy to manufacture evidence and obstruction of justice) as it recounts her life--in which she married young, staged her own kidnapping and became a media superstar.

Gifford is best-known for having co-hosted Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, but she is a burgeoning musical theatre talent who collaborated with Pomeranz on Under the Bridge earlier this year; the intimate musical ran at the Zipper Theatre off-Broadway. She took over for Carol Burnett in the Sondheim revue Putting It Together (also staged by Schaeffer), and has appeared on television and film in E!'s Spinning Out of Control, Model Behavior and Dudley Do-Right.

The White Plains Performing Arts Center is located at 11 City Place in White Plains, NY. For more information, visit www.wppac.com.








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