MasterVoices has announced additional casting for its season-opening concert of Strike Up the Band October 29 at Carnegie Hall. John Ellison Conlee will play the role of influential cheese magnate Horace J. Fletcher in the performance of the rarely-seen musical by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, and George and Ira Gershwin.
Conlee joins the previously announced Shereen Ahmed as Joan Fletcher, Phillip Attmore as Tim Harper, Victoria Clark as Mrs. Draper, Lissa deGuzman as Miss Meade, Claybourne Elder as G. Edgar Sloane, Christopher Fitzgerald as George Spelvin, Bryce Pinkham as Jim Townsend, and David Pittu as Colonel Holmes. The performance will also feature dancers Colin Bradbury, Fiona Huber, Masumi Iwai, Justin Keats, Cory Lingner, Derek Luscutoff.
A satire in which a cheese tycoon offers to sponsor a war with Switzerland if it is named after him, Strike Up the Band was the first of three politically-themed musicals written by the Kaufman, Ryskind, and the Gershwins. It was followed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Of Thee I Sing, and Let 'Em Eat Cake, both of which MasterVoices has performed in previous seasons. MasterVoices Artistic Director Ted Sperling has worked with Laurence Maslon to create a new edition of Strike Up the Band, which exists in two different forms from its original production in Philadelphia in 1927, and its eventual Broadway run in 1930, for which Fletcher's industry was changed from cheese to chocolate. Said Sperling, "Working with both the Gershwin and Kaufman estates, author Laurence Maslon and I have created a new edition of Strike Up the Band, which contains the best of the 1927 and 1930 versions of the show; I hope this may prove to be the blueprint for future performances of this work."
The concert is choreographed by Alison Solomon. The creative team also includes costume designers Tracy Christensen and Somie Pak, lighting designer Shelby Loera, and sound designer Marc Salzberg.
MasterVoices has also announced the launch of its podcast, called The MasterVoices Podcast, and released the first of three episodes exploring different facets of Strike Up the Band. John McWhorter hosts the podcast, which includes interviews with Sperling, Maslon, Cartoon Editor for The New Yorker Bob Mankoff, and conductor and author John Mauceri.
As previously reported, the MasterVoices season will also include the New York City premiere of Scott Davenport Richards and David Cote's opera Blind Injustice, as well as Bach Reframed: The B Minor Mass.
Visit MasterVoices.org for more information.
