Sweet Charity
Book by Neil Simon
Music by Cy Coleman
Lyrics by Dorothy Fields
Performed
August 8-11 and 14-18, 2001
at
The Boal Barn Playhouse
Production Staff
Director | Susanna Ritti |
Music Director | Michael C. Rider |
Scenic Designer | Zachary DeGeorge |
Choreographer | Steven F. Korkus |
Lighting Designer | Jason Zantisch |
Costume Designer | Ann Mareszewski |
Technical Director | Bill Mulberger |
Stage Manager | Heidi N. Lucas |
Apprentice Coordinator | Michael C. Rider |
About the Show
When choreographer Bob Fosse saw Federico Fellini’s film The Nights of Cabiria, he found the perfect vehicle for his wife Gwen Verdon who had not been in a musical for several years. In the film, Cabiria was a shabby, aging Roman streetwalker who still maintained her childlike innocence and gullibility. Fosse decided to move the locale from Rome to New York and to soften Cabiria’s character by making her a dance hall hostess, but still keeping her warm-hearted charm. Fosse frequented the dance halls that were very much a part of the Times Square neighborhood. Indeed, that milieu accounts for the musical’s most successful numbers. Although some critics were bothered by the show’s sleazy atmosphere and its emotional let-down ending, Sweet Charity was a dazzling success. What bothered critics in 1966 would probably not now, thirty-five years later. Musicals have changed with the times. Times have changed in other ways. The dance palaces of the 1960s gave way in the 1970s to porno theatres which have since vanished. Now Disney reigns where once lonely guys would pay “ten cents a dance” ($6.50 by the 1960s) for a half-hour of dance and talk.
Richard B. Gidez
Charity Hope Valentine | Martha Traverse |
Helene | Elaine C. Meder |
Nickie | Nichelle Strzepek |
Carmen | Corey Jean Whitesell |
Rosie | Rachel Barthmaier |
Suzanne | Pam Selfe |
Frenchy | Iillian Merriwether-deVries |
Betsy | Janis Fisher |
Elaine | Amy Baumgarten |
Hostess | Tarin Wells |
Herman | William Daniel Daup |
Ursula March | Kristen A. McKee |
Vittorio Vidal | Michael Martin |
Oscar Lindquist | Chris Hillner |
Daddy Brubeck | Lynn Donald Breon |
Assistants to Brubeck | Justin Pifer Michael Waldhier |
Ensemble | Robbie Hackman Shaun T. McMurtrie Laura Stocker Erin Stover Mark Strzepek |