LCT Announces Roles for LuPone, Benanti, Scott, et al. in WOMEN ON THE VERGE!

Lincoln Center Theater has announced the roles to be played by the leading cast members of   the upcoming musical WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, based on the film by Pedro Almodóvar, with a book by Jeffrey Lane, music and lyrics by David Yazbek and direction by Bartlett Sher. This world premiere production will begin previews on Saturday, October 2 at 8pm and open on Thursday, November 4 at 6:45pm on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre (111 W. 44 Street).

Lincoln Center says of the musical, "Both touching and hilarious, it's a story about women and the men who pursue them... finding them, losing them, needing them, and rejecting them. At the center is Pepa (Sherie Rene Scott) whose friends and lovers are blazing a trail through 1980s Madrid. And why do they all keep showing up at her high-rise apartment? Is it her gazpacho?

Along with Pepa, there's her missing (possibly philandering) lover, Ivan (Brian Stokes Mitchell); his ex-wife of questionable sanity, Lucia (Patti LuPone); Pepa's friend, Candela (Laura Benanti), and her terrorist boyfriend; a power-suited lawyer (De'Adre Aziza) plus a taxi driver (Danny Burstein) who dispenses tissues, mints and advice in equal proportion. Mayhem and comic madness abound, balanced by the empathy and heart that are trademarks of Almodóvar's work. And of Bartlett Sher's too."

The cast will also include Nikka Graff Lanzarone, who the New York Times reports will play Marisa, the fiancée of Lucia's and Ivan's son, and Mary Beth Peil, who pinkbananaworld.com reports will play a concierge. 

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN will have choreography by Christopher Gattelli, musical direction by Jim Abbott, sets by Michael Yeargan, costumes by Catherine Zuber, lighting by Brian MacDevitt and sound by Scott Lehrer.

Book writer Jeffrey Lane collaborated with David Yazbek on the musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The winner of five Emmy Awards, three Writers Guild Awards , two Peabody Awards and a Golden Globe Award, he is best known for his work on such television programs as Mad About You, Ryan's Hope, Lou Grant and The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. Composer-lyricist David Yazbek made his Broadway and musical theater debuts with The Full Monty, for which he earned Tony and Grammy nominations and a Drama Desk Award. Director Bartlett Sher, Resident Director of Lincoln Center Theater, won the Tony Award for his direction of LCT's production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's SOUTH PACIFIC. He was nominated for Tony Awards for the LCT productions of The Light in the Piazza, Awake and Sing! and Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Former Artistic Director of Seattle's Intiman Theatre, his other recent New York credits include A Prayer for My Enemy at Playwrights Horizons and the Metropolitan Opera productions of The Barber of Seville and The Tales of Hoffman.

Lincoln Center Theater is currently presenting the Tony Award winning production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific in the Vivian Beaumont Theater where it will ends its record-breaking run on Sunday, August 22 and A.R. Gurney's The Grand Manner, directed by Mark Lamos, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater through August 1.

Next season, in addition to WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, Lincoln Center Theater will be producing the world premieres of John Guare's A Free Man of Color, directed by George C. Wolfe, (beginning Thursday, October 21) in the Vivian Beaumont Theater and Jon Robin Baitz' Other Desert Cities, directed by Joe Mantello, (beginning Thursday, December 16) in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, the American premiere of the National Theatre of Great Britain's critically acclaimed production of War Horse (beginning Thursday, March 17) in the Vivian Beaumont Theater and the New York premiere of A Minister's Wife, a new musical version of Shaw's Candida (beginning Thursday, April 7) in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. LCT3 will present three productions next season at The Duke on 42nd Street including the world premieres of The Coward, a new play by Nick Jones, directed by Sam Gold (November 8 - December 4) and When I Come To Die, by Nathan Louis Jackson, directed by Thomas Kail (January 31 - February 26).

De'Adre Aziza Broadway: Passing Strange (Tony nomination). Off-Broadway: Dream on Monkey Mountain, Macbeth (Classical Theatre of Harlem), Running Man (Musical Theater Group). Film: Passing Strange, Miracle at St. Anna (both directed by Spike Lee), Sex and the City, Brown Sugar. TV: Starved.

Laura Benanti LCT: In The Next Room or the vibrator play (Outer Critics Circle nomination). Broadway: Gypsy (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Awards), Nine (Outer Critics Circle nomindation), Into the Woods (Tony, Drama Desk, LA Ovation nominations), Swing (Tony nomination), Maria in West Side Story, The Wedding Singer. Off-Broadway: Chris Durang's Why TortureIs Wrong ... (Public), Wonderful Town, Gypsy (both at City Center Encores!), Time and Again.

Danny Burstein LCT: South Pacific (Outer Critics Circle Award; Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations). Broadway: The Drowsy Chaperone (Tony Award nomination), Saint Joan, The Seagull, Three Men and A Horse, A Little Hotel on the Side, The Flowering Peach, A Class Act, Titanic, Company. Off-Broadway: Mrs. Farnsworth, Psych, All in the Timing. Film/TV: HBO's upcoming Boardwalk Empire, Transamerica, Law & Order, Ed, Absolutely Fabulous.

Nikka Graff Lanzarone Off-Broadway: Seussical: The Musical. Regional theater: The Who's Tommy (Bay Street Theatre), Carnival (Papermill Playhouse), Chicago, The Wild Party. Film/Television: Bandslam, Rhapsody Ibiza.

Patti LuPone LCT: Anything Goes (Tony Award nomination, Drama Desk Award), Matters of the Heart. Recent NY stage credits: Gypsy (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Awards, Drama League Award - Distinguished Performance of the Season), Sweeney Todd (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Award nominations), Passion (Lincoln Center American Songbook Series and Live From Lincoln Center broadcast), Candide (NY Philharmonic), Can Can (City Center Encores!), Noises Off, The Old Neighborhood, Master Class, Patti LuPone on Broadway. Opera: The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (LA Opera - debut): Jake Heggie's To Hell And Back (San Francisco Baroque Philharmonia Orchestra), Regina (Kennedy Center). TV: 30 Rock, Ugly Betty, Will & Grace (as herself). Author: Patti LuPone: A Memoir to be published by Harmony Books in September.

Brian Stokes Mitchell: LCT: Love/Life, his critically acclaimed concert. Broadway: Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha (Tony nomination), FrEd Graham/Petruchio in Kiss Me, Kate (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Awards, Coalhouse Walker Jr. in Ragtime (Tony nomination), August Wilson's King Hedley II (Tony nomination), Kiss of the Spider Woman, Jelly's Last Jam, Oh, Kay!, Mail (Theatre World Award). Encores!: Do Re Mi and Carnival. Numerous concert appearances including Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Tanglewood,and at the White House for President Clinton. TV and film credits include The Prince of Egypt, Crossing Jordan, Frasier. President of the Actors' Fund.

Mary Beth Peil Broadway: the revivals of Sunday in the Park With George & Nine at the Roundabout Theater Co, The King and I opposite Yul Brynner. An Obie Award winner her off-Broadway credits include productions of Albee, Gurney, Pinter, Ibsen and Rudnick at the Atlantic Theater Co., Playwrights Horizons, NY Theater Workshop and Signature Theater. TV: The Good Wife, Dawson's Creek, The Reagans, Law & Order. Film: Flags of Our Fathers, The Stepford Wives, The Odd Couple II, Mirrors.

Sherie Rene Scott Broadway: Everyday Rapture (Tony Award nominations for Best Actress in a Musical, Best Book of a Musical), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Award nominations), The Little Mermaid (Outer Critics Circle nomination), Aida (Clarence Derwent Award), Tommy, Rent, Grease. Off Broadway: The Last Five Years (Drama Desk Award nomination), Landscape of the Body (Obie Award), Debbie Does Dallas.