The Royal Family of Broadway | |
---|---|
Music | William Finn |
Lyrics | William Finn |
Book | James Lapine Rachel Sheinkin |
Basis | The Royal Family by Edna Ferber George S. Kaufman |
Productions | 1998 Workshop 2000 Workshop 2018 Barrington Stage Company |
The Royal Family of Broadway is a musical by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin based on the 1927 play The Royal Family by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. It premiered at the Barrington Stage Company in June 2018. [1]
The musical is set in the 1920s and loosely based on the legendary Barrymore family.
An earlier version of the same show had an invite-only workshop in 1998. With a book by Richard Greenberg, the cast included Eileen Heckart (Fanny), Donna Murphy (Julia), Claire Lautier (Gwen), Remak Ramsey (Burt), Reg Rogers (Tony), Howard McGillin (Gil, Julia's love interest), Rick Holmes (Perry, Gwen's love interest), Debra Monk (Kitty, Burt's wife), and Dick Latessa (Oscar, the producer). [2]
A second workshop, produced in 2000 by Barry and Fran Weissler, was directed by Jerry Zaks and choreographed by Scott Wise. The cast included Laura Benanti (Gwen), Carolee Carmello (Julie), Tovah Feldshuh (Kitty), Elaine Stritch (Fanny), Bryan Batt (Tony), Jonathan Bleicher (little boy), John Dossett (Gil), Larry Keith (Oscar), and Jeremy Webb (Perry). The ensemble included Cleve Asbury, Jim Borstelman, Susan Fletcher, Casey Miles Good, Susan Hefner, Danette Holden, Joe Locarro, Mary McCloud, Clasi Miller, Mark C. Reif, Josh Rhodes, and Jerome Vivona. [2]
A private reading was held in March 2001, with a new book by James Lapine. [3] Finn lost the adaptation rights to the play, and then gained the rights again in 2012, with Rachel Sheinkin working on the book. [4]
The reworked show premiered at the Barrington Stage Company. The show was directed by John Rando and choreographed by Joshua Bergasse. The cast featured, as the Cavendish family: Harriet Harris (Fanny), Laura Michelle Kelly (Julie), Will Swenson (Tony), and Hayley Podschun (Gwen). [5] The cast also featured Arnie Burton (Bert), Kathy Fitzgerald (Kitty Dean), Alan H. Green (Gil), AJ Shively (Perry), and Chip Zien (Oscar). The ensemble featured Holly Ann Butler, Michelle Carter, Tim Fuchs, Eli Goykhman, Tyler Johnson-Campion, Lindsay Kraft, Sam Paley, Tyler Matthew Roberts, Patrick Sharpe, Westley Strausman, Chiara Trentalange, Jake Vacanti, and Noah Virgile. The production was scheduled to run from June 7, 2018 to July 7. [6]
Gwyneth Evelyn "Gwen" Verdon was an American actress and dancer. She won four Tony Awards for her musical comedy performances, and served as an uncredited choreographer's assistant and specialty dance coach for theater and film. Verdon was a critically acclaimed performer on Broadway in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, having originated many roles in musicals, including Lola in Damn Yankees, the title character in Sweet Charity and Roxie Hart in Chicago. She is also strongly identified with her second husband, director-choreographer Bob Fosse, remembered as the dancer-collaborator-muse for whom he choreographed much of his work and as the guardian of his legacy after his death.
Robert Louis Fosse was an American actor, choreographer, dancer, and film and stage director. He directed and choreographed musical works on stage and screen, including the stage musicals The Pajama Game (1954), Damn Yankees (1955), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), Sweet Charity (1966), Pippin (1972), and Chicago (1975). He directed the films Sweet Charity (1969), Cabaret (1972), Lenny (1975), All That Jazz (1979), and Star 80 (1983).
The Royal Family of Broadway is a 1930 American pre-Code comedy film directed by George Cukor and Cyril Gardner and released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay was adapted by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Gertrude Purcell from the play The Royal Family by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman. It stars Ina Claire, Fredric March, Mary Brian, Henrietta Crosman, Arnold Korff, and Frank Conroy. It was shot at the Astoria Studios in New York.
Chicago is a 1975 American musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. Set in Chicago in the jazz age, the musical is based on a 1926 play of the same title by reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, about actual criminals and crimes on which she reported. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal".
Sweet Charity is a musical with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and book by Neil Simon. It was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse starring his wife and muse Gwen Verdon alongside John McMartin. It is based on the screenplay for the 1957 Italian film Nights of Cabiria. However, whereas Federico Fellini's black-and-white film concerns the romantic ups-and-downs of an ever-hopeful prostitute, in the musical the central character is a dancer-for-hire at a Times Square dance hall. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1966, where it was nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning the Tony Award for Best Choreography. The production also ran in the West End as well as having revivals and international productions.
William Alan Finn is an American composer and lyricist. He is best known for his musicals, which include Falsettos, for which he won the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical, A New Brain (1998), and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005).
Hunter Foster is an American musical theatre actor, singer, librettist, playwright and director.
The Royal Family is a play written by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. Its premiere on Broadway was at the Selwyn Theatre on 28 December 1927, where it ran for 345 performances to close in October 1928. It was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1927–1928.
Susan P. Stroman is an American theatre director, choreographer, film director and performer. Her notable theater productions include The Producers, Crazy for You, Contact, and The Scottsboro Boys. She is a five-time Tony Award winner, four for Best Choreography and one as Best Director of a Musical for The Producers. In addition, she is a recipient of two Laurence Olivier Awards, five Drama Desk Awards, eight Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater. She is a 2014 inductee in the American Theater Hall of Fame in New York City.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a musical comedy with music and lyrics by William Finn, with a book written by Rachel Sheinkin, conceived by Rebecca Feldman with additional material by Jay Reiss. The show centers on a fictional spelling bee set in a geographically ambiguous Putnam Valley Middle School. Six quirky adolescents compete in the Bee, run by three equally quirky grown-ups.
Cady Huffman is an American actress.
Rob Ashford is an American stage director and choreographer. He is a Tony Award, Olivier Award, Emmy Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award winner.
Julianne Boyd is an American theatre director and was the Founding Artistic Director of the Barrington Stage Company of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. She retired in 2022.
Frederick Applegate is an American actor, singer and dancer.
William Ellis Porter II is an American actor, singer, writer, and director. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, and he achieved fame performing on Broadway before starting a solo career as a singer and actor.
Lawrence Leritz is an American actor, dancer, singer, producer, director, fitness expert and choreographer.
Romance in Hard Times is a musical by William Finn. It ran briefly Off-Broadway in 1989 at the Public Theater.
Finding Neverland is a musical with music and lyrics by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy and a book by James Graham adapted from the 1998 play The Man Who Was Peter Pan by Allan Knee and its 2004 film version Finding Neverland. An early version of the musical made its world premiere at the Curve Theatre in Leicester in 2012 with a book by Allan Knee, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie. A reworked version with the current writing team made its world premiere in 2014 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Following completion of its Cambridge run, the production transferred to Broadway in March 2015.
Alexander Michael Brightman is an American actor, singer, and writer. He is best known for his work in musical theatre, specifically as Dewey Finn in the musical adaptation of School of Rock and the title character in Beetlejuice the Musical. Both roles earned him nominations for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical in 2016 and 2019 respectively.
Sister Act is an American media franchise created by Paul Rudnick and currently consisting of two films: Sister Act (1992), Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), and a Broadway musical.