Welcome to Broadway, the glamour, power, and sleaze capital of the universe.
J.J. Hunsecker rules it all with his daily gossip column in the New York Globe, syndicated to sixty million readers across America. J.J. has the goods on everyone, from the President to the latest starlet. And everyone feeds J.J.'s appetite for scandal, from J. Edgar Hoover and Senator
Joseph McCarthy, down to a battalion of hungry press agents who attach their gossip to a client that J.J. might plug. When down-and-out press agent Sidney Falco tries to hitch his wagon to J.J., all while keeping secrets about his new client's relationship with J.J.'s sister, Sidney learns that you can become no one fast when J.J. turns on you.
New Line continues its 26th season with the local premiere of the fiery 2002 jazz-rock musical THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, by legendary film and stage composer
Marvin Hamlisch (his last theatre score), lyricist
Craig Carnelia, and Tony-winning playwright
John Guare, based on the famous short story and film. The show was nominated for seven Tonys, including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score, and eleven Drama Desk Awards. It's a Faustian moral nightmare, all set to a sizzling "jazz noir" score from the composer of the stage musicals A Chorus Line, They're Playing Our Song, Smile, The Goodbye Girl, and the film scores for The Sting, The Way We Were, Sophie's Choice, and many others.
The cast of New Line's SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS includes
Zachary Allen Farmer as J.J. Hunsecker,
Matt Pentecost as Sidney,
Ann Hier as Susan,
Sean Michael as Dallas,
Sarah Porter as Rita,
Kimi Short as Madge, with Jason Blackburn, Mara Bollini,
Kent Coffel, Alison Helmer, William Pendergast, Michelle Sauer,
Christopher Strawhun, and
Sara Rae Womack. The show is directed by
Scott Miller and
Mike Dowdy-Windsor, with music direction by Jeffrey
Richard Carter, choreography by
Taylor Pietz, scenic and lighting design by
Rob Lippert, costume design by
Sarah Porter, and sound design by Elli Castonguay.
As Vanity Fair tells it, "It was conceived as a short story called 'Hunsecker Fights the World,' published in 1948 in Collier's by
Ernest Lehman, an unhappy press agent who wanted only to be a novelist and a screenwriter; it was Lehman's attempt to expiate his guilt for being one of the little guys feeding the big columnists the stuff that made Walter Winchell more powerful than presidents. . . An insecure man, Winchell was quick to perceive slights and avenged them ruthlessly. As he wrote in his autobiography, 'I'm not a fighter. I'm a 'waiter. I wait until I can catch an ingrate with his fly open, and then I take a picture of it." "
The writer
Michael Herr called Winchell "the wizard of the American vicarious: gossip columnist, failed vaudevillian, power broker, and journalistic demagogue, one of the most powerful and famous men of his time." At the height of his popularity, in the late 1930s, 50 million people (two thirds of American adults) read Winchell's syndicated column and listened to his Sunday-night radio broadcast. That's power. In today's world of the 24-hour news cycle, The Drudge Report, and
Donald Trump, J.J,.'s grotesque morality doesn't seem all that foreign...
The Sweet Smell of Success contains adult language and content.
ABOUT NEW LINE THEATRE
New Line Theatre is a professional company dedicated to involving the people of the St. Louis region in the exploration and creation of daring, provocative, socially and politically relevant works of musical theatre. New Line was created back in 1991 at the vanguard of a new wave of nonprofit musical theatre just starting to take hold across the country.
New Line has given birth to several world premiere musicals over the years and has brought back to life several shows that were not well served by their original New York productions.
Altogether, New Line has produced 80 musicals since 1991, and the company has been given its own entry in the Cambridge Guide to American Theatre and the annual Theater World. New Line receives funding from the Regional Arts Commission and the Missouri
Arts Council, a state agency.
For other information, visit New Line Theatre's full-service website at
www.newlinetheatre.com. All programs are subject to change. New Line's current season closes with Out on Broadway: The Third Coming, Aug. 3-19. New Line has also announced next season, which will include Lizzie in October 2017, Anything Goes in March 2018, and Yeast Nation in June 2018.
Also, we continue our cabaret series, New Line Theatre Off Line at the Monocle, with
Larissa White (Bonnie & Clyde, Heathers, Atomic, Threepenny) on May 20, 2017 (click here for info); and
Lindsey Jones (
Jerry Springer the Opera, Heathers, Zorba) on June 17, 2017 (click here for info).
Photo Credit: Jill Ritter Lindberg
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