An Encores! Production

SYNOPSIS:

Manhattan decadence in the 1920's provides the backdrop for this tough musical fable. Queenie, a vaudeville chorine, hosts the blow-out of the title with her vicious lover, a black-face minstrel. The guests are a vivid collection of the unruly and the undone: Queenie's conniving rival; a cocaine-sniffing bisexual playboy; a washed-up boxer; a Black brother act; a diva of indeterminate age and infinite life experience; the fresh-off-the-farm ingénue whose naïveté quickly evaporates; a lesbian actress and her comatose girlfriend; and the bargain basement Valentino who catches Queenie's roving eye. The jazz- and gin-soaked party rages to a mounting sense of threat as artifice and illusion are stripped away. When midnight debauchery leads to tragedy at dawn, the high-flying characters land with a sobering thud, reminding us that no party lasts forever.

Directed by Lili-Anne Brown

Cast includes Jelani Alladin, Wesley J. Barnes, Joseph A. Byrd, Jordan Donica, Claybourne Elder, KJ Hippensteel, Andrew Kober, Lesli Margherita, Evan Tyrone Martin, Betsy Morgan, Meghan Murphy, Tonya Pinkins, Jasmine Amy Rogers, Maya Rowe, Adrienne Warren