City of Angels: Population 21 (playing 48)

Goodspeed’s announced the cast for their season-ending production of City of Angels (Sept. 23-Nov. 27). It’s a show that warmed the heart of Connecticut, since the original Broadway production won a Tony for Fairfield County resident (and diehard Westport Country Playhouse supporter) James Naughton. The first national tour which played the Shubert Theater in New Haven is also fondly recalled hereabouts, because it starred Barry Williams (the young Max Frost in Wild in the Streets, and OK, OK, Greg in The Brady Bunch).

This latest cast is deftly assembled from Goodspeed veterans who also have big-city musical and touring chops. D.B. Bond, who plays Stine, toured in Legally Blonde, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and even in the title role of The Scarlet Pimpernel, and served Broadway in the casts of The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables. Stine’s film-noir alter ego Stone will be Burke Moses, of the sprawling Goodspeed production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and seen on Broadway in The Frogs, Kiss Me Kate, Beauty and the Beast and Guys and Dolls. Moses has played Stone before, in 2006 for the Reprise! Broadway’s Best series at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse.

The double role of Bobbi and Gabby is played by Laurie Wells, Diva Dorothy Brock in the Goodspeed’s 42nd Street. Liz Pearce—Velma in the U.S. and U.K. tours of the critically underappreciated Scooby Doo in Stage Fright (concocted by Jim Millan of Canada’s Crow’s Nest theater, assisted by Mark McKinney of Kids in the Hall/Slings and Arrows). The Goodspeed resume of Nancy Anderson, who plays Donna/Oolie, stems back to ‘90s productions of Sweeney Todd and By Jeeves. Jay Russell (Lincoln in Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas when it world-premiered at the Long Wharf Theatre) is Buddy Fiddler/Irwin Irving. Jeffrey David Sears, City of Angels’ Jimmy Powers, was in the ensemble of a recent Avenue Q tour. Gregor Paslawsky (Lenin in the Long Wharf and Williamstown productions of Stoppard’s Travesties) is Luther Kingsley/ Werner Krieger. Danny Bolero (from the first national tour of In the Heights) is Lt. Munoz and Pancho Vargas. Allen E. Read (Paper Mill Playhouse’s 2009 revival of The Full Monty) will play Peter Kinglsey and Gerald Pierce.
Big Six will be played by Jerry Gallagher. Spencer Rowe will play Sonny. Josh Powell will play Officer Pasco, Del Dacosta, and Gene. Robert J. Townsend will play Mahoney. Christina Morrell will play Margaret and Anna. A young actress Kathleen Rooney, who happens to share the same name as my wife but is completely unrelated, plays Mallory/Avril. Others involved: Michael Keyloun (Dr. Mandril/ Gilbert), Jerry Gallagher (Big Six), Spencer Rowe (Sonny), Josh Powell (Officer Pasco/Del Dacosta/Gene), Robert J. Townsend (Mahoney) and Christina Morrell (Margaret/Anna).

Four-fifths of the a cappella group Marquee Five—Mick Bleyer, Vanessa Parvin, Sierra Rein and Adam West Hemming—has been cast as the show’s back-up vocal ensemble “The Angel City 4.” (The other MF member, not to be at Goodspeed, is Julie Reybur.) Shades of the recent Goodspeed revival of My One and Only, which featured a consistent vocal trio, dubbed The New Rhythm Boys, in a supporting role.

City of Angels will be directed by Darko Tresnjac, who took this gig (and the assignment to direct Bell, Book and Candle at Long Wharf and Hartford Stage) before being chosen as the new artistic director of Hartford Stage a few months ago. Tresnjac directed Carnival! for the Goodspeed last year, and his association with the theater goes back to A Little Night Music a decade ago.

City of Angels is one of those shows that seems more attuned to regional theaters than to Broadway, where it really stuck out in the early 1989 as an alternative to Meet Me in St. Louis and revivals of Shenandoah and The Sound of Music. City of Angels book writer Larry Gelbart was on a roll at the time, stage-wise: his political comedy Mastergate had moved to New York following a regional premiere at the ART in Cambridge.

Looking forward to this one very much.