Ron Bohmer, most recently seen on Broadway in A Little Night Music (Frid), joins the cast of The Fantasticks in the role of the narrator El Gallo on Monday, Oct. 8. He replaces actor Jeremiah James.
El Gallo, originally played by
Jerry Orbach, is the dashing, yet villainous bandit, hired to disrupt the relationship between the young lovers Matt (currently played by pop sensation
Aaron Carter) and Luisa (
Addi McDaniel). Bohmer previously was seen as El Gallo at the
Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, where he was awarded the Acclaim Award for Best Actor.
Bohmer is a veteran Broadway performer, having appeared in multiple Broadway shows and tours. No stranger to long-running and
Popular Productions like The Fantasticks, Bohmer played Enjolras in Les Miserables, and performed the title roles in both The Phantom of the Opera and The Scarlet Pimpernel, for which he was nominated for the National Broadway Theatre Award. Other Broadway/Tour credits include, Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard (Jefferson Award Nom.), Coach in Disney’s High School Musical, Alex in Aspects of Love (Robby Award), Sir Percival Glyde in The Women in White, Frid in A Little Night Music, Father in the Tony nominated revival of Ragtime. Off-Broadway/Regional credits include: In The Next Room or The Vibrator Play (Dr. Givings), Showboat (Gaylord Ravenal), I Love You, You’re Perfect... (Man Number Two),
Forbidden Broadway – SVU (multiple characters, won the 2005 Drama Desk Award), Dracula (Count Dracula). Bohmer has appeared with numerous symphonies across the United States. His website is
www.ronbohmer.com.
A modern twist on Romeo and Juliet, The Fantasticks (music by
Harvey Schmidt, book/lyrics/direction by
Tom Jones) is the quintessential story of a boyfriend and girlfriend who quickly grow apart when they realize they want to experience the world. What follows is a hilarious and heartwarming story appropriate for all ages. The score, which includes the hit songs “Try To Remember”, “Soon It’s Gonna Rain” and “They Were You”, is as timeless as the story itself. Having run for 42 years in its original production at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, The Fantasticks is the world’s longest-running musical.
The Fantasticks company includes triple platinum recording artist and pop sensation
Aaron Carter (Broadway’s Seussical, Winner of multiple awards including TEEN Choice Awards, Kids Choice Awards, and RTL Young Artist of the Year Award),
Bill Bateman (Broadway’s Gypsy starring
Patti LuPone, Hello, Dolly!),
MacIntyre Dixon (Broadway’s Cyrano de Bergerac, Gypsy starring
Bernadette Peters, The Tempest, Beauty and the Beast),
Tom Flagg (The Fantasticks at Sullivan Street, Broadway’s
Will Rogers Follies, How to Succeed),
Matt Leisy, (St. Louis Rep’s The History Boys),
Addi McDaniel (
Arena Stage, South Coast Rep.),
Michael Nostrand (A&E’s Emmy Award-winning Peter Pan, national tours of Jelly’s Last Jam, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Fantasticks at Sullivan Street Playhouse), and
Dan Sharkey (Broadway’s The Music Man, Show Boat) and
Scott Willis (El Gallo at Sullivan Street Playhouse and in the 30th anniversary tour, Broadway’s Crazy for You and State Fair).
Tickets to The Fantasticks are priced at $76.50 and can be purchased by calling the box office at (212) 921-7862, by logging onto
Ticketmaster.com, or by visiting the Snapple Theater Center box office at 210 West 50th Street at Broadway. A limited number of premium front row seats are available for each performance priced at $126.50.
The Fantasticks plays at The
Jerry Orbach Theater in the Snapple Theater Center, 210 West 50th Street at Broadway. The box office phone number is (212) 921-7862.
www.SnappleTheater.com.
The performance schedule is as follows: Mondays at 8PM, Tuesdays at 8PM, Wednesdays at 2PM, Fridays at 8PM, Saturdays at 2PM & 8PM and Sundays at 3PM & 7:30PM.
When The Fantasticks (music by
Harvey Schmidt; book/lyrics/direction by
Tom Jones) opened in 1960 at a tiny theater on New York City’s Sullivan Street, no one ever dreamed it would run for 17,162 performances and become the world’s longest-running musical. Since then there have been over 11,000 productions in more than 3,000 U.S. cities and towns and in 67 countries, from Afghanistan to Iran to Zimbabwe, making The Fantasticks the world’s most frequently-produced musical. The show has been performed at The White House and has survived eleven U.S. Presidents, beginning with President Eisenhower. Japan, New Zealand, Germany, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Israel have all seen multiple productions. The Fantasticks has been translated into numerous languages including Pashto, Dari, Icelandic, Arabic, Hebrew, Magyar and Mandarin.
The Fantasticks has played all fifty states, plus Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. It has been performed for the Peace Corps in Africa, at the Shawnee Mission in Kansas, the Menninger Foundation, Olympian Fields, Yellowstone National Park and the White Sands Missile Range. It was performed in Mandarin by the Peking Opera, and in 1990 under the auspices of the United States State Department it played for the first time in Russia. There have been two film versions, one in 1964 and one in 2000, and the list of notable individuals who have appeared in the show through the years includes
Jerry Orbach,
Glenn Close,
Kevin Kline,
Harrison Ford,
Liza Minnelli,
F. Murray Abraham,
Patti LuPone,
Kristin Chenoweth,
John Davidson, American Idol finalist
Anthony Fedorov and Amazing Race winner
Nick Spangler.
Tom Jones and
Harvey Schmidt wrote The Fantasticks for a summer theater at Barnard College. After its Off Broadway opening in May 1960 it went on to become the longest-running production in the history of the American stage and one of the most frequently-produced musicals in the world. Their first Broadway show, 110 in the Shade, was revived on Broadway in a new production starring
Audra McDonald. I Do! I Do!, their two-character musical starring
Mary Martin and
Robert Preston, was a success on Broadway and is frequently produced around the country and the world. (One production, in Minneapolis, played for 22 continuous years with the same two actors in the leading roles.) For several years Jones and Schmidt worked privately at their theater workshop, concentrating on small- scale musicals in new and often untried forms. The most notable of these efforts were Celebration, which moved to Broadway, and Philemon, which won an Outer Critics Circle Award. They contributed incidental music and lyrics to the Off Broadway play Colette starring Zoë Caldwell, then later did a full- scale musical version under the title Colette Collage. The Show Goes On, a musical revue featuring their theater songs and starring Jones and Schmidt, was presented at the York Theater, and Mirette, their musical based on the award-winning children’s book, was premiered at the
Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. In addition to an Obie Award and the 1992 Tony Award for Excellence in the Theater for The Fantasticks, Jones and Schmidt were inducted into the Broadway Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre, and on May 3, 1999 their stars were added to the Off Broadway Walk of Fame outside the
Lucille Lortel Theater.
For more about the show, visit
www.FantasticksOnBroadway.com.
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