Alan Safier to Star in SAY GOODNIGHT GRACIE at Queens Theatre, 9/27-28

Queens Theatre will present the Tony-nominated play Say Goodnight Gracie, starring Alan Safier as George Burns, written by Rupert Holmes (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) and directed by Michael White. The show will be at Queens Theatre (14 United Nations Avenue South, Flushing Meadows Corona Park) on Saturday, September 27 at 2pm & 8pm and on Sunday, September 28 at 3pm. Join Rupert Holmes, Alan Safier, and Moderator WABC's Sandy Kenyon for a lively talk-back after the 3pm performance on Sunday, September 28. Tickets are $25-$42 and are now available at www.queenstheatre.org.

George Burns, who spanned over 90 years of American entertainment history, is now alive and kicking -- and singing and dancing! -- in a stunning tour de force solo performance for Alan Safier. With vintage photographs and video clips from film and television performances, Say Goodnight Gracie brings to life Burns's fascinating story.

Say Goodnight Gracie is Broadway's third-longest running one-man show. It won the National Broadway Theatre Award for Best Play and was nominated for a Tony Award in the same category.

Alan Safier as George Burns in Say Goodnight Gracie runs September 27 & 28, 2014; Saturday at 2pm & 8pm, Sunday at 3pm. Tickets are $25-$42 and are now available at www.queenstheatre.org. For more information, call the box office at (718) 760-0064 or email boxoffice@queenstheatre.org. Queens Theatre is located at 14 United Nations Avenue South, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, NY 11368. FREE PARKING.

BIOGRAPHIES:

RUPERT HOLMES (playwright and incidental music) received a Tony nomination for Say Goodnight Gracie, which also won the National Broadway Theatre Award for Best Play. For his musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood (recently revived to critical acclaim on Broadway), Holmes became the first individual in theatrical history to singly win Tony Awards for Best Book, Best Music and Best Lyrics, while Drood itself won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The New York Drama Desk bestowed identical honors upon Holmes and his creation. He also received the Drama Desk award for Best Book for the musical comedy Curtains, with a score by the legendary John Kander & Fred Ebb, for which Holmes also received Tony nominations for book and additional lyrics. The Mystery Writers of America gave his Broadway comedy-thriller Accomplice their coveted Edgar Award; it was the second time he received the honor. Holmes also created and wrote the critically-acclaimed AMC TV series "Remember WENN," set in the golden age of radio. His first novel, Where the Truth Lies, was made into a movie starring Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon. With Marvin Hamlisch supplying the music, he created book and lyrics for the award-winning musical of Jerry Lewis's classic The Nutty Professor. He wrote the book for the Broadway-bound musical Secondhand Lions, which premiered in Seattle this past fall, and his stage play A Time to Kill (based on John Grisham's novel) opened on Broadway in October, 2013.

ALAN SAFIER (George Burns) celebrates more than five decades on stage, on television, in commercials, and in voice-overs with this, his seventh season as everyone's favorite centenarian, both off-Broadway and across the U.S. and Canada. In addition to playing George Burns in Say Goodnight Gracie, Alan has portrayed many other famous people in his stage career: John Adams in 1776, Spiro Agnew in Gore Vidal's An Evening with Richard M. Nixon, Charles J. Guiteau in the Los Angeles premiere of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, Albert Einstein in the world-premiere musical The Smartest Man in the World, and Truman Capote in the hit off-Broadway 30th-anniversary revival of New Faces of 1952.

Alan's first stage appearance was at the age of nine, when he played Lord Low-hat in an adaptation of Dr. Suess's Bartholomew & the Oobleck. He was hooked. He continued acting in school, teen theatre, summer stock, and regional and community theatre productions. He also worked as a radio disc jockey while in high school and college.

After receiving an MFA in Acting at Ohio University, where he studied under the esteemed Bob Hobbs, Alan debuted off-Broadway in another play called Say Goodnight, Gracie (this one about neither George nor Gracie!). Other New York stage credits include Scrambled Feet, Bend Your Ear and Once in a Lifetime. Some of his regional theatre credits include Romeo & Juliet;Steve Martin's The Underpants; Littlechap in Stop the World, I Want to Get Off; Bluntschli in Shaw's Arms & the Man; Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls; and Gratiano in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, in which he co-starred with famed former Group Theatre actor Morris Carnovsky.

While living and working in New York in the '70s and '80s, he studied with legendary acting teacher Wynn Handman, and with Academy Award-winning actress Beatrice Straight. West coast credits include a long run as Michael in the L.A. premiere of The Men from the Boys (Mart Crowley's sequel to his seminal play The Boys in the Band), homeless Vietnam veteran Lou in Steve Tesich's The Speed of Darkness, Stephen in Patrick Marber's Dealer's Choice, Frenchy in Clifford Odets's Rocket to the Moon, Buddy Fidler in the Cy Coleman musical City of Angels, Herb Schwartz in Deb Laufer's hit comedy The Last Schwartz at The Zephyr in Hollywood, and Maltby & Shire's musical revue Closer Than Ever.

In 2012, he premiered Humbug!, his new one-actor musical version of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Alan plays all 27 characters in the show, which features 12 original songs by Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof) and Michel Legrand (Summer of '42). Next year he stars in the U.S. premiere of John Dowie's Joseph's Gospel, the story of Joseph of Bethlehem, his betrothal to Mary, and the birth of their eldest son, as seen from a dad's comedic point-of-view. Alan Safier may also be familiar to audiences from hundreds of television and radio voice-overs (perhaps most recognizably as the Kibbles 'n Bits dog!) and from guest appearances on TV series. He teaches voice-over, musical performance and acting workshops at universities and theatre festivals across the country. He's the author of the play My Father's Voice and of several published short stories. Alan is also a frequent Performing Guest Artist at the William Inge Theatre Festival in Independence, Kansas. His CD of American standards from the '30s, '40s and '50s, Alan Safier Sings the Songs of George & Gracie's Heyday, was released in 2011. He also composed the song "Another Tuesday Morning," featured on the Jim Brickman CD Simple Things. Alan grew up in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, and is a passionate Cleveland Indians baseball fan, an avid reader, a lover of theatre and old Hollywood movies, and a politics junkie. He currently resides in New York City. You're invited to browse Alan's website at www.alansafier.com and follow him on Twitter @alansafe.

SANDY KENYON (Talk-back Moderator) is Entertainment Reporter and movie critic for Channel 7 Eyewitness News. His popular entertainment reports can be seen weekdays on Eyewitness News This Morning and frequently on other Eyewitness News broadcasts. In addition, his reviews and feature reports appear each week in more than 6000 NYC taxicabs as part of WABC-TV's Taxi TV.

Before joining the Eyewitness News Team in 2005, Sandy's reports were heard every weekday morning on 1010 WINS Radio. Prior to that he was CNN's Chief Entertainment Correspondent in LA, where he was best known for his "Hollywood Minute." He began his TV career as an Associate Producer at WNET/Thirteen in New York. He is a graduate of Princeton University, where he co-hosted a national radio show, "Focus on Youth."

Sandy has interviewed hundreds of legendary stars in the course of his career, including Eddie Murphy, Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Clint Eastwood, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and Lauren Bacall to name only a few. During a radio program in May 1994, Sandy interviewed novelist Eileen Goudge. The two were married a year later and now make their home in Manhattan.

About Queens Theatre: Queens Theatre (QT) is the premier performing arts venue in Queens. QT's mission is to provide quality and diverse live performances that are economically and geographically accessible to the 2.2 million residents of Queens, the most ethnically diverse county in the nation, and the surrounding metropolitan region. To foster greater cultural awareness and appreciation, the Theatre presents and produces programs that reflect this diversity and feature international, national and local artists.

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