By JOHN GUARE, MEL SHAPIRO, and GALT MACDERMOT
Based on the play by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Directed by ZI ALIKHAN
Music Direction by GREG PLISKA
Choreography by KARLA PUNO GARCIA
Lighting Design by PAUL HUDSON
Sound Design by PETER BRUCKER
Costume design by LUX HAAC
Projection Design by NICHOLAS HUSSONG
Prop Design by LAUREN RUSSELL
Casting Director: ALEXANDRE BLEAU
2537 Broadway at 95th Street | NY, NY
Featuring a star-studded cast led by
DELPHI BORICH
CHUCK COOPER
DEMARIUS COPES
JORDAN DONICA
COBY GETZUG
JIN HA
BEN JONES
TAYLOR IMAN JONES
KELVIN MOON LOH
JOHN-MICHAEL LYLES
ALISA MELENDEZ
MIKAYLA RENFROW
SAM SIMAHK
NASIA THOMAS
ALYSHA UMPHRESS
PLUS special guest performances by ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS and JAY O. SANDERS
This ebullient rock musical adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy features a score from the celebrated composer of Hair. In Renaissance Italy, lifelong friends Proteus and Valentine both fall for the fair Sylvia, and comic antics inevitably ensue.
Red Bull Theater’s annual celebratory concert benefit explores the intersection of classical theater and the modern musical, and the
enduring versatility of the stories at the heart of our mission. And it’s a lot of fun!
This special event will raise funds for RED BULL THEATER, New York’s “most exciting classical theater” (Time Out), supporting our Off-Broadway productions, award-winning Revelation Reading series, and education and accessibility programs including Shakespeare in Schools. Visit RedBullTheater.com to learn more.
THE CAST
*Casting is subject to change
CAST in order of appearance
Speed | JOHN-MICHAEL LYLES
Valentine | JORDAN DONICA
Proteus | JIN HA
Julia | ALISA MELENDEZ
Lucetta | ALYSHA UMPHRESS
Thurio | KELVIN MOON LOH
Launce | COBY COOPER
Duke of Milan | CHUCK COOPER
Silvia | TAYLOR IMAN JONES
Eglamour | SAM SIMAHK
Chorus | DELPHI BORICH, DEMARIUS R. COPES, BEN JONES, MIKAYLA RENFROW, and NASIA THOMAS
Special Appearances by ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS
and JAY O. SANDERS
BAND
Piano / Conductor | GREG PLISKA
Guitar | MATT DEITCHMAN
Bass | YUKA TADANO
Drums / Percussion | JED FEDER
Trombone | JOSH ROSEMAN
Trumpet | PAM FLEMING
Sax / Reeds | PETER HESS
PRODUCTION TEAM
Director | ZI ALIKHAN
Music Director | GREG PLISKA
Lighting Designer | PAUL HUDSON
Costume Designer | LUX HAAC
Sound Designer | PETER BRUCKER
Projection Designer | NICHOLAS HUSSONG
Prop Designer | LAUREN RUSSELL
Choreographer | KARLA PUNO GARCIA
Production Manager / Stage Manager | NIKKI LINT
Producing Director | NATHAN WINKELSTEIN
Casting Director | ALEXANDRE BLEAU
General Manager | SHERRI KOTIMSKY
JOHN GUARE plays include Lydie Breeze; Bosoms and Neglect; The House of Blue Leaves, which won an Obie and NY Drama Critics Circle Award for the Best American Play of 1970-71 and four Tonys in its 1986 Lincoln Center revival; and Six Degrees of Separation, which received the NY Drama Critics Circle Award in 1991 for its LCT production and the Olivier Best Play Award in 1993. Grove Press publishes Landscape of the Body and A Few Stout Individuals. He wrote the lyrics and co-authored the book for the 1972 Tony-winning Best Musical Two Gentlemen of Verona. His screenplay for Louis Malle's Atlantic City earned him an Oscar nomination. In 2003 he won the PEN/Laura Pels Master Dramatist Award; in 2004, the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2005 the Obie for sustained excellence. He is a council member of the Dramatists Guild and co-editor of The Lincoln Center Theater Review.
MEL SHAPIRO's off-Broadway productions include the original staging of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, which won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play in 1971, and Rachel Owen's The Karl Marx Play for American Place Theatre. London productions include the musicals Two Gentlemen of Verona and Kings and Clowns. For Broadway, Shapiro co-wrote the book (with Guare) and directed the 1971 musical adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona and directed the 1978 revival of Stop the World - I Want to Get Off with Sammy Davis, Jr. as well as John Guare's 1979 play Bosoms and Neglect. He has staged works at Lincoln Center, including Václav Havel's The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, which won an Obie Award for Best Foreign Play, and Shakespeare's Richard III. His relationship with Joseph Papp spanned six years at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater. Among his productions there are Guare's Rich and Famous, Marco Polo Sings a Solo, and John Ford Noonan's Older People. Shapiro was one of the founding members of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and served as the head of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. He was the head of graduate acting for the Theatre Department at UCLA. He has taught and directed at the Queensland University of Technology's Theatre School in Brisbane Australia, and the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney Australia. He has served on the boards of the Pittsburgh Public Theater, the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, and the Fund for New American Plays at the Kennedy Center and Theatre of Latin America.
GALT MACDERMOT (1928-2018), the two-time Grammy and Tony Award-winning composer, is best known for the Broadway scores of Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona. He garnered his first Grammy for the song "African Waltz" in 1960. His work spans the gamut of performing arts: musicals, ballet scores, film scores, chamber music, Anglican liturgy, orchestral, poetry, drama accompaniments, band repertory, and opera. His work encompasses a wealth of musical genres, crossing the boundaries of jazz, folk, funk, gospel, reggae, and classical styles. The son of a Canadian diplomat, Galt was born and raised in Montreal. He received a Bachelor of Music from Cape Town University South Africa. Based on his traditional training, he wrote his own arrangements. He moved to New York in 1964 and, three years later, wrote the music for the landmark Broadway production Hair, which he later adapted for the screen. He formed the New Pulse Band in 1979, which features his original music played by some of the world’s greatest musicians, including Bernard Purdie and Wilbur Bascomb. Galt’s music is consistently sampled by hip hop and rap artists who find his rhythms perfect for setting their lyrics to, as in Run DMC’s Grammy Award-winning "Down With The King" and Billboard’s top chart-buster, "Woo-Hah!! Got You All In Check" by Busta Rhymes. Galt MacDermot wrote more than 3,000 songs over his lifetime. His music is listened to and enjoyed in 179 countries worldwide, and Hair has been performed constantly since its inception in over 40 countries worldwide.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
ZI ALIKHAN (he/him) is a queer, first-generation South Asian-American, culturally Muslim theater director. DIRECTING: On That Day in Amsterdam (Primary Stages, Drama Desk Nomination-Outstanding Director, Lucille Lortel Nomination-Outstanding Director), Sanctuary City (Pasadena Playhouse, LA Times-‘Best of the Year’), The Band’s Visit (Writers Theatre/TheatreSquared), RENT (Paper Mill Playhouse), Snow in Midsummer (Classic Stage Company), The Wizard of Oz and Somewhere (Geva Theatre Center), The Great Leap (Portland Center Stage), A Nice Indian Boy (Olney Theatre Center), and Ragtime (Playmakers Repertory Company). UPCOMING: The world premieres of Keiko Green’s You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! at South Coast Rep, Deepak Kumar’s House of India at The Old Globe, and John Anthony Loffredo’s Frou-Frou at Boston Court Pasadena.
A NOTE ABOUT TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
When the rock musical Two Gentlemen of Verona opened in New York in 1971, it was like no other show that had come before, owing much to Hair, which its composer Galt MacDermot had also worked on, and also to the other experimental theatre of the 1960s. But its biggest influence was Joe Papp, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival. It was Papp’s commitment to bring the entire Shakespeare canon to the people of New York, for free and in newly relevant terms, that sparked the project. This musical wasn’t merely based on the Shakespeare play; it was the Shakespeare play, transformed into a rock musical, a still new form.
It was the perfect Shakespeare play for the composer of Hair to tackle. Two Gents was Shakespeare’s Rent, youthful, raw, rowdy, messy, rude, wild; and Jonathan Larson often said he had intended Rent to be the new Hair. Jonathan Larson was in his mid-30s when he wrote Rent, but Shakespeare was still in his mid-20s when he wrote Two Gents. Just as Rent was inspired by Larson’s own life and friends, the same was true of Two Gents.
Shakespeare had only recently arrived in the Big City, coming from small town Stratford, a young man ready to take on the world, just like his character Valentine. Young Will reinvented himself in London, exactly like his characters, living as a single man even though he had a wife and family back in Stratford.
Hair, Two Gents, and Rent, all born out of similar impulses and out of youthful experiments in presentation and storytelling, form an unintentional triptych of rock musicals about American culture. All three shows intentionally lack the polish of standard Broadway fare, but it’s that lack of polish that gives these three shows their rawness, urgency, and potency. They don’t feel manufactured or focus-grouped. They possess that same authenticity that the best rock and roll has.
This was Shakespeare’s first play, and director Mel Shapiro and playwright John Guare fixed some of its problems. With MacDermot they fashioned a new work, still organic to Shakespeare’s play but with a contemporary sensibility that brings it to vivid, modern life. The updated cultural vibe carries with it so much more complexity and such high stakes, adding to Shakespeare’s plot an unplanned pregnancy, a decision about abortion, and a politicized war not unlike Vietnam.
Papp and the musical’s creative team honored the original spirit of Shakespeare’s play – wild, rowdy, sexy, dirty, funny, populist, irreverent, rule-busting, and most of all, deeply, crazily human. Even decades (centuries?) later, this story still teaches us something about becoming an adult, about caring for others, about civility, empathy, love of our fellow humans, and a rejection of the nasty, hateful public discourse of 1971 America – and of America today. Both then and now, America needs to heal, these young people tell us in the finale, and like the end of Hair, it takes innocents to tell us what we should already know.
- Scott Miller