Spangler & Ullman Take Final Bow in THE FANTASTICKS; Altemus & Leisy Join the Company, 12/4 & 12/28

Nick Spangler, winner of the thirteenth season of the Emmy Award-winning reality television series The Amazing Race, will play his final performance as Matt in The Fantasticks this Sunday, December 13, 2009. Erik Altemus, last seen as Frankie Epps in the Musical Theatre Guild of Los Angeles's production of Parade, takes over the role on December 14.

Douglas Ullman Jr. will play his final performance as The Mute on Sunday, December 27, 2009. Matt Leisy, recently seen in The History Boys at St. Louis Rep, will assume the role on Monday, December 28.

The announcement was made today by Terzetto LLC, Pat Flicker Addiss and MARS Theatricals, the producers of The Fantasticks, the world's longest-running musical.

Altemus's credits include Camelot, Annie and Meet Me in St. Louis (The Muny), My Fairy Lady (Saddleback Civic Light Opera) and Phantom (Musical Theater West). Leisy's credits include Young Scrooge in Alan Menken's A Christmas Carol (Alabama Shakespeare Festival), Mordred in Camelot (Pennsylvania Center Stage), Great Expectations (Mill Mountain Theater), Oliver (Westchester Broadway Theater), The Sound of Music (Broadway Asia) and The Importance of Being Earnest (Charleston Stage).

The Fantasticks (music by Harvey Schmidt, book/lyrics/direction by Tom Jones) is a captivating and simple romantic comedy about a boy and girl who fall in and out of love at the hands of their meddling fathers. The audience uses its imagination to follow the narrator, El Gallo, as he creates a world of moonlight and magic until the boy and girl find their way back to one other. The score, which includes the hit songs "Try To Remember," "They Were You" and "Soon It's Gonna Rain," is as timeless as the story itself.

Having played a record-breaking 17,162 performances in its original run at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, The Fantasticks is now playing in the heart of Times Square at The Snapple Theater Center.

The Fantasticks company includes Lewis Cleale (Broadway's Spamalot, Once Upon A Mattress; Off Broadway's Call Me Madam, A New Brain), MacIntyre Dixon (Broadway's Gypsy, 1776, A Funny Thing...Forum, Beauty and The Beast), Tom Flagg (Broadway's Will Rogers Follies, How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Oklahoma), Gene Jones (Broadway's Big River, Joe Turner's Come and Gone; No Country for Old Men), Michael Nostrand, (A&E's Emmy Award-winning Peter Pan, national tours of Jelly's Last Jam, The Mystery of Edwin Drood), Evy Ortiz, Richard Roland (Broadway's The Scarlet Pimpernel, Follies), Steve Routman (The Keen Company's The Conscientious Objector, Awake and Sing! at Arena Stage) and Kimberly Whalen (West Side Story, Carousel at Lyric Stage).

The Fantasticks plays at The Snapple Theater Center, 210 West 50th Street at Broadway. The performance schedule is as follows: Mondays at 8PM, Wednesdays at 2PM, Thursdays at 8PM, Fridays at 8PM, Saturdays at 2PM & 8PM, and Sundays at 3PM & 7:15PM.

Tickets for The Fantasticks are available by calling the box office at (212) 921-7862 or Ticketmaster.com at (212) 307-4100.

In the photo: Erik Altemus (photo courtesy of DBS Press)

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.