Premiere reading of Tales of the City musical
This weekend, Roc and I went to the premiere — the first-draft read-through semi-dress performance, actually — of a new queer musical that promises to be bigger than Avenue Q.
On Friday night we attended the first full open read-through of a musical based on Armistead Maupin‘s beloved Tales of the City at the nearby Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, just minutes from our house. Held in a converted barn, the performance was our first having signed up for a family membership at the Center, which is a gorgeous campus looking out onto the shimmering waters of Long Island Sound.
Not until we checked the program did we discover that the performance was the premiere public airing of the piece, actually a musical reading of the script with full cast, piano and drums, as part of the summer musical theater conference at the O’Neill — same place where Avenue Q got its start.
The songs are written by Jake Shears (aka Jason Sellards) of Scissor Sisters fame, whom I believe I spotted across the theatre, sitting and taking notes, with SS musical director John Garden the composer, presumably nearby at the keyboard. Jeff Whitty, the librettist for the project, was one of the creative team who brought out, through an earlier summer conference at the O’Neill Center, Avenue Q, which Roc and I saw our first time on Broadway on our May NYC trip.
Considering that the production had less than a week together in workshop to learn and rehearse the numbers and dialogue, we were very impressed at the quality of the singing and acting. Topping the cast list were Christopher J. Hanke, who energetically played Michael Mouse Tolliver, Betsy Wolf as Mary Ann, and Candy Buckley as the inimitable Anna Madrigal. There were some wonderful tunes, including a very bawdy number, belted out by Kristine Zbornik as Winnemucca flophouse madame Mother Mucca, that had us roaring in laughter.
The standout member of the cast to me was the stunning Jose Llana, who played Lionel, the Asian-American delivery guy who becomes the father of DeeDee’s twins. I couldn’t keep my eyes, or ears, off of him the whole show. Mr Llana later appeared, in costume, as the hilarious drag queen MC at the End Up jockey shorts contest.
We hadn’t realized until the performance that we were taking part of a bit of queer muscial theatre history in the making. Fabulous job, and I can’t wait to see it on Broadway!
