Brandon Dahlquis, Brian Zane & More Star in Porchlight Revisits... Production of CITY OF ANGELS, Beginning Tonight

Porchlight Music Theatre and Artistic Director Michael Weber present the next production in the second season of Chicago's hit "lost" musicals in staged concert series, Porchlight Revisits... City of Angels, featuring book by Larry Gelbart (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, M*A*S*H), music by Cy Coleman (Sweet Charity, Barnum) and lyrics by David Zippel (The Goodbye Girl, Disney's Mulan) with direction by Christopher Pazdernik and music direction by Aaron Benham. City of Angels is presented for two-nights-only tonight, March 3 and Wednesday, March 4 at 8:00 p.m. and is performed on the set of Porchlight's Sondheim on Sondheim (February 6 - March 15) on nights when there are no performances at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont Ave.

Tickets for City of Angels are $25 and include access to the popular pre-performance event, Behind the Show Backstory at 7:15 p.m. Created and hosted by Weber, this multi-media presentation sets the stage on the development of the original 1989 production of City of Angels, reveling in all the juicy backstage stories and revealing the state of the art on Broadway that season. Single tickets to City of Angels are available at porchlightmusictheatre.org or by calling the Stage 773 box office, 773.327.5252.

City of Angels is an ingenious spoof of 1940s Hollywood and whodunit films with side-by-side stories about the real world of a detective fiction writer and the "reel" world of his fictional gumshoe hero. One balances romance and rewrites, while the other slinks through a film noir netherworld of thugs and femmes fatales in this winner of the Best Musical Tony Award featuring the songs "What You Don't Know About Women," "With Every Breath I Take" and "You're Nothing Without Me."

Porchlight Revisits...City of Angels stars Porchlight Artistic Associate Brandon Dahlquist as film noir detective "Stone" and Matt Edmonds as aspiring screenplay writer "Stine" with Brian Zane (Buddy/Irving), Nathan Mittleman (Jimmy Powers), Molly Kral (Oolie/Donna), Anthony Apodaca (Munoz/Vargas), Allison Sill (Bobbi/Gabby), Jennifer Grubb (Alaura, Carla), Kim Green (Mallory/Avril) and the "Angel City 4" quartet: Emily Goldberg, Andrew Lund, Andrew Sickel and Stephanie Souza.

ABOUT BRANDON DAHLQUIST, "Stone" - Brandon Dahlquist returns to Chicago after appearing on Broadway in Bronx Bombers and at San Francisco's 42nd Street Moon in The Boy Friend. Acting credits at Porchlight include "Leon Czolgocz" in Assassins, "George" in Sunday in the Park with George, "Warren Harding" in The Teapot Scandals and in Best Musical! A Completely Improvised Musical Comedy!. Additional theatre credits include; "Count Carl Magnus" in A Little Night Music (Writers Theatre-Jeff nomination Supporting Actor), 12 Angry Men (Maltz Jupiter Theatre-Carbondell Award Ensemble), Knute Rockne: All American (TATC-Jeff nomination Supporting Actor), "Paul Hornung" in Lombardi at Peninsula Players and "Thomas Jefferson" in 1776 at The Asolo Repertory, as well as work at Drury Lane Oakbrook, Drury Lane Water Tower, Noble Fool Theatricals, Congo Square, BoHo and Next Theatre.

Matt Edmonds was most recently seen as "Charles Clark" in Griffin Theatre's production of Titanic. He has been seen in Seussical at Chicago Shakespeare, All-American (Jeff nomination Supporting Actor) at Redtwist Theatre, Signs of Life at Victory Gardens, You Never Can Tell at Remy Bumppo and The Boys from Syracuse at Drury Lane Oakbrook.

Christropher Pazdernik is a director/choreographer with credits including Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Show Us Your Love, F***ing Men and Carrie (Bailiwick Chicago); Spamalot (Jedlicka); Zanna, Don't! & Bombs Away! (Bailiwick Repertory); Candide, Porchlight Revisits...Anyone Can Whistle and Miracle on 34th Street (Porchlight Music Theatre); Time After Time: The Songs of Jule Styne (Theo Ubique); The Full Monty (Village Players), and a series of musical theater revues at Davenport's Piano Bar & Cabaret. He also works frequently as a guest artist at Elmhurst College, his alma mater, and with new musicals in development. Besides serving as a PMT Artistic Associate, he is the Artistic Producer for Bailiwick Chicago and the Annual Fund Coordinator at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

Aaron Benham is a local actor, pianist, and music teacher. His Chicago credits include The Ritz and The Baker's Wife (Circle Theatre); Christmas in Chicago (The Fine Print Theatre); Porchlight Revisits...Anyone Can Whistle and Putting it Together (Porchlight Music Theatre); Rose of Stambul (Chicago Folks Operetta); The Fantasticks (Promethean Theatre Ensemble) and Time After Time: The Songs of Jule Styne (Theo-Ubique). He has a BFA from Emerson College in Boston and is a music director at the Actor's Training Center in Wilmette and operates his own piano/voice studio.

Chicago-born Larry Gelbart is an American television writer, playwright, screenwriter and author, most known as a creator and producer of the record-breaking hit TV show M*A*S*H. His distinguished career as a writer of comedy reads like a history of the art over the last 40 years. His writing credits date back to the Golden Age of radio when Gelbart became a professional comedy writer before finishing high school. He served with Armed Forces Radio Service for one year and 11 days, but it was a most productive period. He wrote for the Army's "Command Performance," while continuing to write for Joan Davis and Jack Paar, who was then a summer replacement for Jack Benny. He then went on to write for Jack Carson and Bob Hope for radio and television, and he also contributed to the Red Buttons TV show. In 1953 he joined the staff of TV's Your Show of Shows. For that series Gelbart won the Sylvania Award and two Emmy Awards. In the 1960s he began writing for the theater, writing My L.A., The Conquering Hero, and with Burt Shevelove tried rewriting Plautus. The result was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a smash Broadway musical comedy that earned Gelbart and Shevelove a 1962 Tony Award. Gelbart wrote, created and produced the television series M*A*S*H. He again dipped into the classics and transformed Ben Johnson's Volpone into a Broadway success, Sly Fox, directed by Arthur Penn and starring George C. Scott. He wrote for numerous movies including Oh God! With George Burns, Neighbors and Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman, which earned him an Academy Award nomination and best screenplay honors from the New York, Los Angeles and National Film Critics organization.

Cy Coleman began classical piano lessons at age four and made his Carnegie Hall debut at age seven. He was educated at New York's High School of Music and Art and at the New York College of Music and began playing popular music and jazz at cocktail lounges, nightclubs, and parties. Coleman soon began teaming with lyricists; most notable among these was Carolyn Leigh, with whom he had a long and productive, though stormy, relationship. Among their hits were "Witchcraft," "The Best Is Yet to Come," "Hey, Look Me Over" from their score for the Broadway musical Wildcat and "I've Got Your Number" and "Real Live Girl" from their score for Little Me. Coleman then collaborated with Dorothy Fields on Sweet Charity, which yielded three popular songs-"Hey, Big Spender," "If My Friends Could See Me Now," and "The Rhythm of Life"-and on Seesaw. I Love My Wife, written with Michael Stewart. followed in 1977, and in 1978 came Coleman's first Tony Award-winning score, for On the Twentieth Century, with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Coleman also won Tonys for City of Angels and The Will Rogers Follies. Later stage musicals included Welcome to the Club and The Life. Coleman also produced television specials and composed scores for films.

David Zippel is a lyricist and director. His lyrics have won him the Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, two Grammy Award nominations and three Golden Globe Award nominations. His songs appear on more than twenty-five million CDs around the world, and have been recorded by many great singers including Stevie Wonder, Christina Aguilera, Mel Torme, Ricky Martin, Cleo Laine, Barbara Cook and Nancy LaMott.

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