WOMEN ON THE VERGE Cast Heads into the Recording Studio Today, 1/19

The cast of Lincoln Center Theater's production of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the new musical based on the film by Pedro Almodóvar, with book by Jeffrey Lane, music and lyrics by David Yazbek and direction by Bartlett Sher, reunite today, January 19, to record the original cast recording of the musical, which ended its limited engagement run on Sunday, January 2 at the Belasco Theatre. The CD, to be released by Ghostlight Records in the spring of 2011 will be produced by David Yazbek and Dean Sharenow with Kurt Deutsch serving as Executive Producer.

The original cast recording of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown will feature De'Adre Aziza, Laura Benanti, Danny Burstein, Justin Guarini, Nikka Graff Lanzarone, Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Mary Beth Peil and Sherie Rene Scott.

When Pedro Almodóvar arrived in town in 1988 to show his new film at the New York Film Festival he became an instant sensation. Channeling the burst of energy and freedom in post-Franco Spain, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown was one of the most unusual and exhilarating new films in years. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and quickly became not just a classic, but a favorite.

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN is a new musical based on the film. Lincoln Center Theater's Resident Director, Bartlett Sher, still happily reeling from his achievement on South Pacific, leads the extraordinary collaborators Jeffrey Lane (book) and David Yazbek (music and lyrics). Lane and Yazbek, the team behind Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, have taken Almodóvar's tale and infused it with their own wry, comic style and an irresistible Spanish beat.

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? Gazpacho anyone?

Along with Pepa, there's her missing (possibly philandering) lover, Ivan (Brian Stokes Mitchell); his ex-wife of questionable sanity, Lucia (Patti LuPone); their son Carlos (Justin Guarini); 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.