Hello Again has words and music by LaChiusa, and is suggested by Arthur Schnitzler's 1900 Vienna-set play La Ronde, which shows the connections made between ten related couples. Lincoln Center Theater produced the musical Off-Broadway in 1993-94; a cast album preserves the score. Observers have noted that this new production shows more flesh than the LCT staging did.
TG artistic director Jack Cummings III (TG's The Audience and The Boys in the Band) directs a cast that includes Alan Campbell (Sunset Boulevard, Tony nominee; Contact) as The Senator, Blake Daniel (Spring Awakening) as The Young Thing, Jonathan Hammond (The Boys in the Band, OBIE winner; Ragtime) as The Writer, Rachel Bay Jones (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; Hair) as The Actress, Nikka Graff Lanzarone (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), Robert Lenzi (South Pacific) as The College Boy, Alexandra Silber (Carousel—West End; Master Class with Tyne Daly) as The Young Wife, Elizabeth Stanley (Million Dollar Quartet; Company; Cry-Baby) as The Nurse, Bob Stillman (Dirty Blonde, Tony nominee; Grey Gardens) as The Husband and Max von Essen (Les Miserables; Xanadu) as The Soldier.
Hello Again plays to April 3. A five-time Tony Award nominee, LaChiusa has written the Broadway musicals The Wild Party, Marie Christine and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. His Off-Broadway credits include Hello Again, First Lady Suite, Little Fish, See What I Wanna See, The Petrified Prince and Bernarda Alba. His upcoming musicals include Giant and Queen of the Mist.
The production's creative team includes set designer Sandra Goldmark (TG's The Boys in the Band); costume designer Kathryn Rohe; lighting designer R. Lee Kennedy (TG's The Audience, Bury the Dead); sound designer Michael Rasbury; choreographer Scott Rink; musical director Chris Fenwick; and orchestrator Mary-Mitchell Campbell (Drama Desk winner for Company). The production stage manager is Wendy Patten.
For more information about Transport Group and Hello Again, visit www.transportgroup.org. *
Founded in 2001, Transport Group, under the leadership of Jack Cummings III, artistic director, and Lori Fineman, executive director, is a not-for-profit theatre company that develops and produces work by American playwrights and composers with the aim of exploring the American consciousness in the 20th and 21st centuries. Transport Group is the winner of a special 2007 Drama Desk Award for its "breadth of vision and its presentation of challenging productions." Transport Group's productions have included Thornton Wilder's Our Town, which featured older actors in the roles of Emily and George and a 12-year-old girl as the Stage Manager; Requiem for William, an evening of seven seldom produced plays by William Inge; the first New York revival of Michael John LaChiusa’s First Lady Suite; the world premiere of the musical The Audience; Normal, a new musical about a mother's battle to save her daughter from anorexia; cul-de-sac, a new play by Tony Award nominee John Cariani; the first New York revival of Tad Mosel's Pulitzer Prize play, All the Way Home; the 50th anniversary, Obie-winning production of William Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs; the world premiere musicals See Rock City & Other Destinations, Crossing Brooklyn, Marcy in the Galaxy and Being Audrey, and the first New York revival of Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead. Both First Lady Suite and Bury the Dead were filmed for the New York Performing Arts Library's Theatre on Film and Tape Archive.
Transport Group recently presented a sold-out, extended engagement of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band, which was nominated for five 2010 Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Revival of a Play.
