A new off-Broadway production by Classic Stage Company of Rodgers & Hammerstein's third musical, Allegro, will star Claybourne Elder (Sunday in the Park with George, Bonnie & Clyde) and Tony nominee Elizabeth A. Davis (Once).
The cast also features George Abud, Alma Cuervo, Malcolm Gets, Maggie Lakis, Megan Loomis, Paul Lincoln, Jane Pfitsch, Randy Redd, Ed Romanoff and Jessica Tyler Wright.
John Doyle, who won a Tony Award for his direction of Sweeney Todd in 2005 and also helmed Company on Broadway, directs. Costume design is by Tony Award winner Ann Hould-Ward (Beauty and the Beast), lighting by Jane Cox and sound by Dan Moses Schreier. Scenic design is by Doyle himself.
Allegro is the second project of CSC's Musical Theater Initiative, which launched last year with Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Passion, also directed by Doyle. CSC's upcoming season includes Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country with Peter Dinklage and Taylor Schilling, Hamlet with Peter Sarsgaard, and Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus with Chris Noth.
Allegro was Rodgers & Hammerstein's follow-up to Oklahoma! and Carousel. It tells the story of Joseph Taylor Jr., a second-generation small-town doctor whose ambitions lead him to the big city of Chicago. Considered too moralistic when it opened on Broadway in 1947, this musical about an ordinary man did not measure up to the enormous success of the duo's two previous shows, and ran for only nine months. It is not often revived, though Astoria Performing Arts Center in Queens mounted a production earlier this year that earned an NYIT nomination for Outstanding Production of a Musical.
Smarting from the disappointment, Rodgers & Hammerstein regrouped and came up with their next huge hit, South Pacific. In the decades since, Allegro has mostly fallen through the cracks.
Previews begin November 1 prior to an official opening November 19 for a limited engagement through December 7.
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