Dee Hoty, Liz Larsen and More Set for George Street Playhouse's RICH GIRL

George Street Playhouse and Artistic Director David Saint have announced casting for the fourth production of the New Brunswick theatre's season, the world premiere of Rich Girl by Victoria Stewart.

Returning to George Street are two Broadway veterans well known to The Playhouse's audience: Dee Hoty (2 Lives, Old Times) and Liz Larsen (The Value of Names, Falsettos). They are joined by two newcomers to New Brunswick: Crystal Finn (A Thousand Clowns, Two River Theatre) and Tony Roach (All's Well that Ends Well, Shakespeare Theatre in Washington DC). Rich Girl is produced in association with the Cleveland Play House and will be helmed by its Artistic Director Michael Bloom. Performances begin Tuesday, March 12 and continue through April 7. Opening night is set for Friday, March 15.

Creating the world of Rich Girl will be created by scenic designer Wilson Chin, lighting designer Matthew Richards, costume designer Jennifer Caprio and sound designer Jill BC DuBoff.

For the first time in her life, Claudine has toppled head-over-heels in love. But her celebrity financial guru mother has obvious misgivings about her daughter's amorous entanglements with Henry -- an artist with rugged good looks, just enough charisma and a negative bank balance. But does money matter when happiness is on the line? Rich Girl is a clever and hip new comedy about women and their relationship to men, mothers and money - in that order.

Individual tickets, beginning at $28 are currently on sale, as are three play subscriptions and flexible admission packages. For further information or to make a purchase, please call the GSP Box Office 732-246-7717, or visit The Playhouse website www.GSPonline.org. George Street Playhouse is located at 9 Livingston Avenue in the heart of New Brunswick's Dining and Entertainment district.

Before graduating from the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, Victoria Stewart was a professional stage-manager, working with David Rabe, Anne Bogart and Peter Sellars among others. Victoria has received the Francesca Primus Award, the Helen Merrill Award, a Martha R. Ingram Fellowship, a Jerome Fellowship and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award. She's been in residence at Ucross/Sundance, Donmar Warehouse, Hermitage, Tofte Lake and Hedgebrook. Her most recent play Rich Girl has had readings at City Theater, Tennessee Rep and Broken Watch and was nominated for a Susan Smith Blackburn Award. Her plays include Hardball (Live Girls Theater, SPF), 800 Words: The Transmigration of Philip K. Dick, (Workhaus Collective, Hourglass Group, Live Girls Theater, named one of the top ten productions of 2009 by Citypages), LIVE GIRLS (Urban Stages, WHAT, Stage Left), Leitmotif (South Coast Rep, Page 73), Nightwatches (Overlap Productions), The Last Scene, and an adaptation of Henry James' The Bostonians. She was one of the collaborators on Fissures (lost and found) presented at the 2010 Humana Festival. She is now working on a screenplay for HBO about the recording industry's battle with Napster and on a collaborative piece, Kafka in Postville, with Cory Hinkle and the Wilhelm Bros. about the INS raid in Postville, IA. Her adaptation of Mercy Watson to the Rescue will premiere at The Children's Theatre in Minneapolis in the fall of 2011. She is a producing member of the Workhaus Collective, a core member of the Playwrights' Center and a member of WGA West.

Michael Bloom is the eighth artistic director of Cleveland Play House. Recently for CPH's New Ground Theatre Festival, he directed Every Good Boy Deserves Favor with The Cleveland Orchestra. For CPH he has adapted Emma (published by Samuel French), and directed Ten Chimneys, Lost in Yonkers, Heaven's My Destination, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Lincolnesque, Rabbit Hole, Well, and Private Lives. He has directed at many of the country's other major theatres including American Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Old Globe Theatre, South Coast Rep, Seattle Rep, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, Alley Theatre, ALLIANCE THEATRE Company, and Long Wharf Theatre. His productions have also been seen throughout Japan. His off-Broadway production of Sight Unseen garnered three OBIE Awards, and he received a Drama Desk nomination for direction. Other productions include the American premiere of A Young Lady from Rwanda; Gross Indecency, Elliott Norton Award for Best Directing, 1998; and the world premieres of Dinner with Friends at Actors Theatre of Louisville and Tennessee Williams' Spring Storm. His articles have appeared in American Theatre Magazine and The New York Times, and his book Thinking Like a Director was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2001.

Under the leadership of Artistic Director David Saint, George Street Playhouse has become a nationally recognized theatre, presenting an acclaimed mainstage season while providing an artistic home for established and emerging theatre artists. Founded in 1974, The Playhouse has been well represented by numerous productions both on and off-Broadway - recent productions include the Outer Critics' Circle Best Musical Award-winner The Toxic Avenger, the Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Drama League nominated production of The Spitfire Grill and the Broadway hit and Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning play Proof by David Auburn, which was developed at GSP during the 1999 Next Stage Series of new plays. George Street Playhouse programming is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and by its lead season sponsor Johnson & Johnson. The Star Ledger is 2012-13 print media sponsor for George Street Playhouse. This production of Rich Girl is sponsored by The Karma Foundation.

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