ANYTHING GOES Makes OC Premiere at Segerstrom Center, Now thru 9/29
By: BWW News Desk Sep. 24, 2013
The national tour of Roundabout Theatre Company's ANYTHING GOES, the new Broadway revival of Cole Porter's timeless classic musical theatre masterpiece, will make its Orange County premiere tonight, September 24 - 29 at Segerstrom Center for the Arts as part of the Curtain Call Series.
Winner of the 2011 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, Roundabout Theatre Company's ANYTHING GOES sails direct from Broadway under the direction of Kathleen Marshall, who won the 2011 Tony Award for Best Choreography.
Rachel York will star as Reno Sweeney with Fred Applegate as Moonface Martin. The principal cast also includes Josh Franklin as Billy Crocker, Jeff Brooks as Purser, Joyce Chittick as Erma, Alex Finke as Hope Harcourt, Dennis Kelly as Elisha Whitney, Vincent Rodriguez III as Luke, Marcus Shane as John, Sandra Shipley as Mrs. Evangeline Harcourt, Edward Staudenmayer as Sir Evelyn Oakleigh, and Chuck Wagner as Captain.
The ensemble includes Sarah Agar, Jeremy Benton, Jacqueline Burtney, Jan Leigh Herndon, Kristie Kerwin, Gary Lindemann, Marla McReynolds, Michael Milton, Bobby Pestka, Courtney Rottenberger, Vanessa Sonon, Ryan Steer, Kristopher Thompson-Bolden, Aaron Umsted, Mackenzie Warren, Sara Andreas, Audrey Cardwell, Sean McKnight and Tony Neidenbach.
Roundabout Theatre Company's ANYTHING GOES features music and lyrics by Cole Porter; original book by P.G. Wodehouse & Guy Bolton and Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse; and new book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman. The creative team includes music direction by Jay Alger with additional orchestrations by Bill Elliot, original scenic design by Derek McLane, costumes by Martin Pakledinaz, lighting design by Howell Binkley and sound design by Brian Ronan.
The National Tour of Roundabout Theatre Company's ANYTHING GOES is dedicated to the memory of Martin Pakledinaz, a beloved member of the Roundabout Theatre Company family.
Cole Porter's roundup of nostalgic hits in the production include "You're the Top," "Friendship," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "It's De-Lovely," "Blow, Gabriel, Blow" and, of course, "Anything Goes."
ANYTHING GOES, the 1934 musical comedy about the lovers, liars and clowns on a transatlantic cruise is "a daffy, shipshape romp!" - Variety. When the S.S. American heads out to sea, etiquette and convention head out the portholes as two unlikely pairs set off on the course to true love ... proving that sometimes destiny needs a little help from a crew of singing sailors, an exotic disguise and some good old-fashioned blackmail.
The New Broadway Cast Recording of Roundabout Theatre Company's ANYTHING GOES, nominated for a 2011 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album, is available on Ghostlight Records.
Kathleen Marshall received 2011 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Awards for choreography and Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics nominations for direction for Roundabout Theatre Company's ANYTHING GOES. Also for Roundabout, Marshall directed and choreographed The Pajama Game and choreographed Follies and 1776. Other Broadway credits include Wonderful Town; Grease; Boeing-Boeing; Little Shop of Horrors; Seussical; Kiss Me, Kate; and Swinging on a Star. Off-Broadway: Two Gentlemen of Verona (New York Shakespeare Festival), Saturday Night (Second Stage), Violet (Playwrights Horizons) and As Thousands Cheer (Drama Dept). City Center Encores!: Bells Are Ringing, Applause, Carnival, Hair and Babes in Arms; Artistic Director for four seasons. For ABC/Disney: "Once Upon a Mattress" and Meredith Willson's "The Music Man" (Emmy nomination). She has received three Tony Awards, three Drama Desk Awards, three Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Astaire Award, the George Abbott Award, the Richard Rodgers Award and the Pennsylvania Governor's Award for the Arts. Marshall is the Vice President of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and is an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company.
ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) was most recently represented across the country with the critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning national tour of Twelve Angry Men that toured the country for two years, spending 63 weeks across the United States and Canada. Roundabout's longest-running musical, the revival of Cabaret, received a multi-year tour across the country beginning in 1999. In 2011, Roundabout Theatre Company's acclaimed work reached a worldwide cinema audience with the HD capture and broadcast of their Tony nominated production of The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Brian Bedford.
Now in its 46th season, Roundabout has become one of New York City's most accomplished cultural institutions and one of the country's largest not-for-profit theatre companies. With four theatres both on Broadway and off, Roundabout reaches more than 600,000 theatergoers annually, including over 35,000 subscribers, through award-winning productions of classical and contemporary plays and musicals. In addition to providing an artistic home for many of the finest actors, playwrights, composers and directors of our time, Roundabout is home to model education and outreach programs designed to diversify and develop the theatre's audiences. With four distinctive homes, the American Airlines Theatre, Studio 54 and the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, site of the Laura Pels Theatre and Black Box Theatre, Roundabout has the unique ability to do high-quality, professional stagings of work in a venue perfectly suited to enhance each production. Roundabout also programs the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, where its 2011 Tony Award winning production of ANYTHING GOES played. Since moving to Broadway 20 years ago, Roundabout productions have received 181 Tony nominations, 174 Drama Desk nominations and 195 Outer Critics Circle nominations. Production highlights include Anna Christie, She Loves Me, A View from the Bridge, 1776, Nine, Assassins, Intimate Apparel, The Understudy, The Pajama Game, Sunday in the Park with George, Waiting for Godot, The Importance of Being Earnest and Cabaret, one of the longest-running musical revivals in Broadway history.
Roundabout Theatre Company's 2012-2013 season features Rupert Holmes' The Mystery of Edwin Drood starring Stephanie J. Block, Will Chase, Gregg Edelman, Jim Norton and Chita Rivera, directed by Scott Ellis; Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, with a translation by Ranjit Bolt, starring Douglas Hodge, Clémence Poésy & Patrick Page, directed by Jamie Lloyd; William Inge's Picnic directed by Sam Gold; Nick Payne's If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet directed by Michael Longhurst, with Michelle Gomez, Jake Gyllenhaal, Brian F. O'Byrne; Clifford Odets' The Big Knife starring Bobby Cannavale, directed by Doug Hughes; Lanford Wilson's Talley's Folly, directed by Michael Wilson; Steven Levenson's The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin directed by Scott Ellis. Joshua Elias Harmon's Bad Jews directed by Daniel Aukin is a world premiere production that launches the sixth season of Roundabout Underground following five critically acclaimed seasons of world-premiere productions since its premiere in 2007.
For more information, visit www.anythinggoesthemusical.com. For more information on Roundabout Theatre Company, visit www.roundabouttheatre.org.
Cole Porter (Music & Lyrics) was born in Peru, Indiana, in 1891. He graduated from Yale, where his football songs are still popular. After the failure of his first Broadway show, he lived in Europe, where he married legendary beauty Linda Lee Thomas. Returning to New York in the late 1920s he gained renown for many great songs, including "Night and Day," "Begin the Beguine," "You're the Top" and "I Get a Kick Out of You." The 1930s were highlighted by such Broadway offerings as ANYTHING GOES, Gay Divorce and Jubilee. A crippling riding accident in 1937 left Porter in constant pain, yet he continued to write memorable scores, among them Can-Can, Silk Stockings and his masterpiece, Kiss Me, Kate. He died in 1964.
Guy Bolton (1884-1979) and P.G. WODEHOUSE (1881-1975) were both born in England. They were introduced by Jerome Kern, and he suggested they all work together. They did, tirelessly, and in the beginning of their collaboration wrote nearly one show per month - the famed Princess Theatre musicals. Bolton and Wodehouse went on to write more than 20 musicals together. Usually, they collaborated on the book, and Wodehouse wrote the lyrics. Both lived into their nineties, and both, together and individually, were astoundingly prolific. Bolton, with one collaborator or another, or on his own, had a hand in well more than 100 musicals and straight plays as well as numerous film scripts and novels. Wodehouse wrote 97 books - most notably the "Jeeves" novels - and countless short stories, articles, essays and films, and in 1975 was knighted side by side with Charlie Chaplin. In addition to ANYTHING GOES, their work together includes Have A Heart; Oh! Boy; Leave It to Jane; Oh, Lady! Lady!!; Sitting Pretty; Oh, Kay! and Rosalie. They remained friends and neighbors (in Remsenburg, NY) throughout their final days.
Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse (Co-Authors of the Original Book). The Lindsay and Crouse partnership stands today as the longest collaboration of any writers in theatrical history, lasting for more than 28 years. They first joined forces in 1934, when the producer Vinton Freedley brought them together to rewrite the libretto for ANYTHING GOES (which Lindsay directed). Two years later, they wrote another Cole Porter show, Red, Hot and Blue. Their first straight play, Life With Father, opened in 1939 and holds the record for the longest-running play on Broadway, at 3,224 performances. Lindsay and his wife, Dorothy Stickney, created the roles of Clarence and Vinnie Day, performing them for five years. Among other shows, Lindsay and Crouse also wrote The Sound of Music (score by Rodgers and Hammerstein); the Pulitzer Prize-winning State of the Union; Call Me Madam and Mr. President (scores by Irving Berlin); The Prescott Proposals and The Great Sebastians. They produced The Hasty Heart, Detective Story and Arsenic and Old Lace. Lindsay (1889-1968) was an actor, stage manager, director and playwright before teaming up with Crouse. Crouse (1893-1966) was a newspaperman, a press agent for The Theatre Guild, the author of several books and a librettist before partnering with Lindsay. He later produced, in collaboration with his wife, Anna Erskine Crouse, his son, the writer Timothy Crouse, and his daughter, the actress Lindsay Crouse.
Timothy Crouse (Co-author of the New Book) has been a contributing editor of Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, as well as the Washington columnist for Esquire, writing numerous articles for these and other publications, including The New Yorker. He is the author of The Boys on the Bus, a classic account of the role of the press in presidential campaigns. With Luc Brébion, he translated Roger Martin du Gard's Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort. He is currently writing short stories, one of which, "Sphinxes," was included in the O. Henry Prize Stories 2005. He is the son of one of the original authors of ANYTHING GOES, Russel Crouse.
John Weidman (Co-author of the New Book) has written the books for a wide variety of musicals, among them Pacific Overtures, Assassins and Road Show, all with scores by Stephen Sondheim; Contact, co-created with director/choreographer Susan Stroman; Happiness, score by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman; and Take Flight and Big, scores by Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire. Since his children were pre-schoolers, Weidman has written for "Sesame Street," receiving more than a dozen Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Children's Program. From 1999 to 2009, he served as president of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Segerstrom Center for the Arts is unique as both an acclaimed arts institution and as a multi-disciplinary cultural campus. It is committed to supporting artistic excellence on all of its stages, offering unsurpassed experiences, and engaging the entire community in new and exciting ways through the unique power of live performance and a diverse array of inspiring programs.
Previously called the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Center traces its roots back to the late 1960s when a dedicated group of community leaders decided Orange County should have its own world-class performing arts venue.
As Orange County's largest non-profit arts organization, Segerstrom Center for the Arts owns and operates the 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall and intimate 250-seat Founders Hall, which opened in 1986, and the 2,000-seat Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, which opened in 2006 and also houses the 500-seat Samueli Theater, the Lawrence and Kristina Dodge Education Center's studio performance space and Boeing Education Lab. A spacious arts plaza anchors Segerstrom Center for the Arts and is home to numerous free performances throughout the year as part of Segerstrom Center for the Arts' ongoing Free for All series.
The Center presents a broad range of programming each season for audiences of all ages from throughout Orange County and beyond, including international ballet and dance, national tours of top Broadway shows, intimate performances of jazz and cabaret, contemporary artists, classical music performed by renowned chamber orchestras and ensembles, family-friendly programming, free performances open to the public from outdoor movie screenings to dancing on the plaza and many other special events. It offers many education programs designed to inspire young people through the arts. These programs reach hundreds of thousands of students of all ages with vital arts-in-education programs, enhancing their studies and enriching their lives well into the future.
In addition to the presenting and producing institution Segerstrom Center for the Arts, the 14-acre campus also embraces the facilities of two independent acclaimed organizations: Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory and a site designated as the future home of the Orange County Museum of Art.
Segerstrom Center for the Arts is also proud to serve as the artistic home to three of the region's major performing arts organizations: Pacific Symphony, the Philharmonic Society of Orange County and the Pacific Chorale, who contribute greatly to the artistic life of the region with annual seasons at Segerstrom Center for the Arts.
Pictured: Erich Bergen and Rachel York in Roundabout Theatre Company's ANYTHING GOES. Photo Credit: Joan Marcus, 2012.
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