Bebe Neuwirth Joins Industry Readings Of Cole Porter’s ‘The New Yorkers’

EXCLUSIVE: Two private industry readings of a new production of Cole Porter‘s The New Yorkers featuring much of the cast of an acclaimed 2017 Encores! presentation along with new addition Bebe Neuwirth are set for New York City later this month.

The cast for the presentations also includes Robyn Hurder, Mylinda Hull, Scarlett Strallen, Tam Mutu and Kevin Chamberlin, all returnees from the City Center Encores! production.

John Rando, a Tony winner for Urinetown who most recently directed the Back to the Future musical on Broadway, will direct. The 1930 musical with music and lyrics by Porter and a book by Herbert Fields, was adapted for Encores! by then-artistic director Jack Viertel, and it’s that version getting the readings on April 23 and 24.

Joe Abrams and Sally Wood are producing.

Set in Prohibition-era New York, The New Yorkers follows socialite Alice Wentworth as she pursues bootlegger Al Spanish from Park Avenue to prison.

The New Yorkers originally opened on Broadway in 1930, and featured such future Porter standards as “Love for Sale,” “Take Me Back to Manhattan,” “Let’s Fly Away,” and “I Happen to Like New York.” The Encores! production was painstakingly restored by Viertel from original materials once thought lost, and also incorporated additional Porter songs including “Night and Day” and “You’ve Got That Thing,” among others.

The full cast for the presentations will feature Scarlett Strallen as Alice Wentworth, Tam Mutu as Al Spanish, Kevin Chamberlin as Jimmy Deegan, Mylinda Hull as Mona Low, Robyn Hurder as Lola McGee, Arnie Burton as Feet McGeegan, Byron Jennings as Dr. Windham Wentworth, Bebe Neuwirth as Gloria Wentworth, Anaïs Reno as Lady of the Evening, David Baida as Phillip Booster, Kyle Scatliffe as Capt. Hillary Trask, Matt Saldivar as Doctor/Major Domo, Clyde Alves as Monahan and Jeffrey Schecter as Gregory, with Colin Anderson, John Harmon Cooper, Christine DiGiallonardo, Katie McCreary, Timothy McDevitt, Kent Overshown, Lindsay Roberts, and Daniel Schwait.

The original musical was based on a story by E. Ray Goetz and Peter Arno. The readings’ music direction and arrangements are by Rob Berman.

In its review of the 2017 Encores! production, The New York Times called the musical “divine” and “delirious, blithe and boozy,” evoking “those hedonistic early talking pictures, before the censors got their hands on Hollywood, when nobody appeared to have been told that the Jazz Age was over.”

Porter seems to be enjoying a mini-resurgence these days, with a revival of the great playwright’s Fallen Angels currently in previews on Broadway in a Scott Ellis-directed production starring Rose Byrne, Kelli O’Hara, Christopher Fitzgerald and Mark Consuelos, among others.