Faith Prince, a Tony winner for her performance as Miss Adelaide in the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls, will play a southern baker surrounded by controversy in the Alley Theatre production of Bekah Brunstetter's The Cake, Playbill has learned.
The Broadway favorite, most recently on The Great White Way in the musical comedy Disaster!, will play the role of Della, a North Carolina baker who struggles with deciding to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. Previews begin June 15, 2018 prior to an official opening June 20 in the Neuhaus Theatre. Performances will continue at the Houston, Texas, venue through July 15. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.
Prince made her Alley debut in the workshop of the play during the Alley All New Festival in February 2017.
Prince, who was also Tony-nominated for her performances in A Catered Affair, Bells Are Ringing, and Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, told Playbill, “It's also kind of based on Paula Deen. I like it because [Brunstetter] is actually about 40 minutes from where I grew up in Lynchburg, Charlottesville.”
“We have this pride—sort of a love and hate with the South,” Prince continued. “I remember Alfred Uhry talking about it. You notice I don't live there. I didn't go back there, but don't say anything bad about it. It's very complex. And when I read the play, I literally threw it across the room! I was like, ’I don't want to get into this.’ I have so many issues… And then I picked it up and thought I was the perfect person to show this woman.… [Brunstetter] said, ’I'm really trying to honor the people I came from, but I'm also trying to show the middle road,’ and she does a great job of it. You really start to understand both points of view, whether you agree with them or not.”
Inspired by Brunstetter’s upbringing in North Carolina, The Cake, according to the Alley, is described as such: “A reality TV baking show, complex moral questions, and loads of butter make up the recipe for this brilliant comedy about three women trying to reach out across a divide that keeps growing. Jen lives in New York but has always dreamed of getting married in her native North Carolina. With the wedding six months away, she heads down South to ask Della [Prince], her late mother’s best friend who owns a bakery there, to do the honors of making her wedding cake. Della's cakes are the best—she's going to compete on the Great American Baking Show, no big deal. Della is overjoyed to make Jen’s cake—until she realizes that there isn’t just one bride, but two. She can't really bake a cake for such a wedding, can she?”
Brunstetter is currently a co-producer on NBC's This Is Us. She has previously written for MTV (Underemployed; I Just Want My Pants Back), ABC Family’s Switched at Birth, and Starz’s American Gods. Her plays also include Going to a Place Where You Already Are, The Oregon Trail, Cutie and Bear, A Long and Happy Life, Be A Good Little Widow, and Oohrah!
Visit the AlleyTheatre.org for more information.
Prince is also one of the spectacular talents lined up for Playbill Travel’s Rhine River cruise August 12–20, 2017. She will be joined by Drama Desk winner Andréa Burns, three-time Tony nominee Terrence Mann, two-time Tony nominee Charlotte d’Amboise, Tony nominee Santino Fontana, and music director Seth Rudetsky. Click here for more information.
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