Steve Martin & Edie Brickell's Bright Star Sets Broadway Dates; Carmen Cusack Will Headline
Bright Star will soar up the east coast and land on Broadway this spring. As previously speculated, the Steve Martin and Edie Brickell musical will transfer from D.C.’s Kennedy Center (where it will play a limited engagement beginning December 2) to New York, with performances beginning March 7, 2016 at a Shubert theater to be announced. Opening night is scheduled for March 31. Tony winner Walter Bobbie will direct.
Carmen Cusack is set to make her long-awaited Broadway debut as Alice, starring opposite A.J. Shively as Billy. The two will reprise their leading roles from the Kennedy Center and San Diego’s Old Globe engagements. Cusack has appeared in the West End in Les Miserables and The Secret Garden; she also appeared in Carrie off-Broadway and played Elphaba in the national tour and Australian productions of Wicked. Shively made his Broadway debut in the 2010 revival of La Cage aux Folles.
Joining Cusack and Shively will be Tony nominees Michael Mulheren (Kiss Me, Kate), Stephen Bogardus (Love! Valour! Compassion!), Dee Hoty (Footloose) and Jeff Blumenkrantz (How to Succeed…), as well as Paul Alexander Nolan (Once), Hannah Elless (Godspell), Stephen Lee Anderson (Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark) and Emily Padgett (Side Show). Rounding out the cast are Maddie Shea Baldwin, Allison Briner, Max Chernin, Patrick Cummings, Sandra DeNise, Richard Gatta, Lizzie Klemperer, Michael X. Martin, William Michals, Tony Roach, Sarah Jane Shanks and William Youmans.
The musical, which features music by Martin and Brickell, lyrics by Brickell and a book by Martin, is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and travels between 1945 and 1923. Billy Cane, a young soldier just home from World War II, meets Alice Murphy, the brilliant editor of a southern literary journal. Together they discover a powerful secret that alters their lives.
The production will feature choreography by Josh Rhodes, set design by Eugene Lee, costumes by Jane Greenwood, lighting design by Japhy Weideman and sound design by Nevin Steinberg.
