Zachary Allen Farmer to Headline New Line's BUKOWSICAL

New Line Theatre closes its 22nd season May 30-June 22, 2013, with the regional premiere of one of the most outrageous shows the company has ever produced. With book and lyrics by Spencer Green and Gary Stockdale, and music by Stockdale, BUKOWSICAL is a wacky, high-energy - and gleefully adult - musical comedy, an ironic and insightful 21st-century reboot of the classic American musical comedy, exploring the intersection between sex, drugs, booze, and art, all through the life story of the great American novelist and poet Charles Bukowski.

The New Line cast includes Zachary Allen Farmer as Bukowski, with an ensemble of New Line All-Stars, Ryan Foizey, Joel Hackbarth, Nicholas Kelly, Kimi Short, Christopher Strawhun, Marcy Wiegert, and Chrissy Young. Farmer has appeared with New Line as Barry in the American regional premiere of High Fidelity, as Sheriff Merle Karnopp in the world premiere of Love Kills, as Dr. Prospero in Return to the Forbidden Planet, as Charles Guiteau in Assassins, as Proteus in Two Gentlemen of Verona, and in several other shows as well, including this season's Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Next to Normal.

BUKOWSICAL will be directed by Scott Miller, with music direction by Justin Smolik, choreography by Robin Michelle Berger, scenic design by Scott L. Schoonover, costume design by Amy Kelly, and lighting design by Kenneth Zinkl.

Bukowski was known for the vulgarity of his language and the adult content of his work. So BUKOWSICAL tells Bukowski's life story on his terms, the way he'd write a musical, if the inclination had ever struck him, using the all-American conventions of old-school musical comedy ironically, to explore his dark, damaged, decadent life. Along the way, the show also takes a look at how the experiences of an artist's life affect his art, and how that art becomes universal through its truth-telling.

The musical started life as a 50-minute one-act in Los Angeles, was revised and expanded, and then went on to the New York Fringe Festival, where it won the award for Outstanding Musical. LA Weekly called it "riotously funny." The Los Angeles Times called it "an uproarious romp." Backstage said, "How rare the kept promise in this city of shattered hopes, but when the program to this little gem promises 'delusion, heartbreak, necrophilia, drunkenness, cirrhosis of the liver, and some catchy tunes,' it is as good as its word and then some. . . The production skims along, each number wrapping appalling bad taste in a perky, upbeat melody that makes dipsomania a lighthearted romp. . . It's terrific fun and so wrong in all the right ways."

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His work focused on the ordinary lives of the working poor, on the act of writing, on work, on alcohol, and on his disastrous relationships with women. He wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books. In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife." Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, "the secret of Bukowski's appeal is that he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero." The Los Angeles Times Book Review once said, "Wordsworth, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and the Beats in their respective generations moved poetry toward a more natural language. Bukowski moved it a little further."

For more information about the show, visit http://www.newlinetheatre.com/bukowsicalpage.html