The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center presents the New York City premiere of the musical version of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City March 27 at 7:30 PM at Broadway's Music Box Theatre.
The musical, which premiered in 2011 at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, is based on the first two novels in Maupin’s series, which trace the intertwining lives of colorful San Francisco residents in the 1970’s.
Tales of the City has a score by the Grammy-nominated Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears and John Garden, and a book by Tony Award winner Jeff Whitty.
Maupin, who created the enchanted residence of 28 Barbary Lane, will be in attendance, and is slated to take part in the concert presentation.
The cast features Tony Award nominee Justin Vivian Bond in the central role of Anna Madrigal. Bond is joined by members of the original 2011 San Francisco premiere cast, including Betsy Wolfe as Mary Ann Singleton, and Wesley Taylor as Michael Tolliver, as well as Jose Llana, Mary Birdsong, Josh Breckenridge, Jeffrey Carlson, Kathleen Monteleone, Dianne J. Findlay, Rachel Dratch, and Stephen Schnetzer.
The concert is directed by Travis Greisler with music direction by Cian McCarthy.
All proceeds from the concert will benefit the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and The Trevor Project.
The musical, according to press notes, “follows a community of friends, lovers, and others who reside at the mythical address of 28 Barbary Lane in 1976 San Francisco. Mary Ann Singleton (Betsy Wolfe), a fresh arrival from Ohio, falls into a diverse band of Bohemians and blue- bloods, as families are created and rediscovered under the watchful eye of mystical landlady Anna Madrigal (Justin Vivian Bond).”
Tales of the City was first developed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Music Theater Conference in 2009, and had a subsequent run at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco in 2011. The concert features many returning cast members from both productions as well as support from the original creative team, including original director Jason Moore and music director/vocal arranger Stephen Oremus.
For tickets, priced $60, $175, and $400, click here. The Music Box Theatre is located at 239 W. 45th St.
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Founded in 1964, the O’Neill is the country’s preeminent organization dedicated to “the development of new works and new voices for the American theater, and named in honor of Eugene O’Neill, four-time Pulitzer Prize-winner and America’s only playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.”
The Trevor Project is the “leading and only accredited national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people under the age of 25.”
