Lemenager, La Cause, Etc. Set for Arena's She Loves Me

Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage, which has been increasingly busy with musicals in recent years, has announced casting for its upcoming production of the Bock and Harnick classic She Loves Me, which will begin performances on November 17th on the Fichlander Stage, with opening night set for November 28th.  The show will run through December 31st.

The show will feature Kevin Kraft (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) as Georg Nowack and Brynn O'Malley (Las Vegas Avenue Q, Beauty and the Beast on Broadway) as love/hate interest Amalia Balash, as well as Sebastian La Cause (The Rocky Horror Show, Chicago) as Steven Kodaly, Jim Corti (Ragtime, Candide) as Ladislav Sipos, Hal Robinson (Cabaret, Nick & Nora) as Mr. Maraczek, Clifton Guterma as Arpad Laszlo, Nancy Lemenager (Movin' Out, Never Gonna Dance) as Ilona Ritter, and J. Fred Shiffman as Headwaiter, as well as with Jennifer Andersen, Kurt Boehm, Rosalie Tenseth, Joe Jackson and Ashlee Fife.  Gia Mora and Jeremy Leiner will serve as swings.

Kyle Donnelly will stage the production, which will feature musical direction and conducting by William Foster McDaniel and choreography by Kenneth Lee Roberson.

She Loves Me features music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick (both of Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello!) and a book by Joe Masteroff, who based it upon the play by Miklos Laszlo.   "Georg and Amalia can't stand each other. Intensely competitive clerks in a shop in 1930s Budapest, they are constantly at odds with one another. Each secretly finds solace in an anonymous pen pal — totally unaware that they are actually writing romantic letters to each other."  The property is also familiar to audiences through such film incarnations as The Shop Around the Corner and In the Good Old Summertime.  The score includes the title song, "Tonight at Eight," "Ice Cream," "Dear Friend," "A Trip to the Library" and more.

She Loves Me opened at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on April 23rd, 1963 and ran for 302 performance.  It originally starred Barbara Cook, Daniel Massey, Barbara Baxley and Jack Cassidy, who received a Tony Award for his performance.  The show was successfully revived by the Roundabout Theatre Company in 1993.

The show will feature sets by Kate Edmunds, costumes by Nan Cibula-Jenkins , lighting by Nancy Schertler and sound by Garth Hemphill.

Visit www.arenastage.org for more information on Arena Stage.