Michael Edwards Tapped as New Director of B'way-Bound Two Cities

Michael Edwards is the new director of the Broadway-bound musical A Tale of Two Cities. The show has canceled its announced winter tryout in Chicago and is currently considering two West Coast cities for a summer pre-Broadway premiere, according to a production spokesperson.

Edwards is the producing artistic director of the Asolo Theatre Festival and associate artistic director of Syracuse Stage. His recent productions include Inherit the Wind for Indiana Repertory Theatre IRT, Grapes of Wrath for IRT and Syracuse Stage, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for Syracuse Stage and Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Private Lives for IRT and Syracuse Stage, Hedwig and The Angry Inch and Copenhagen for Syracuse Stage and GEVA in New York, The White Devil for ACA at the Shakespeare Theatre in D.C., the world premiere of Lynn Nottage's Las Meninas The Ladies in Waiting for San Jose Rep, The Winter's Tale and The Merchant of Venice for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Enter the Guardsman for The Old Globe, for The Importance of Being Ernest and Amadeus Indiana Repertory Theater, Syracuse Stage and Virginia Stage Company, Macbeth for Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and Cosi Fan Tutte for Opera San Jose. He is known in Australia for his direction of operas, having staged large mountings of Cavalleria Rusticana, I Pagliacci and Aida there in recent years. He has also helmed mountings of The Barber of Seville and Aida for New York's Metropolitan Opera.

A Tale of Two Cities had announced David H. Bell as its original director. However, while the show was in the midst of a Manhattan workshop in late July, Bell departed the project, citing "immediate personal problems." The search for a new director has been on ever since.

Set against the epic backdrop of the French Revolution and based on the classic novel by Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities is a musical about injustice, vengeance and the redemptive power of love. When Dr. Manette is released from the French Bastille after 17 years, he must be resurrected from the brink of madness by his daughter, Lucie. In England they meet two very different men: the exiled French aristocrat, Charles Darnay, whom Lucie marries, and the drunken cynic, Sydney Carton. Soon family secrets and political intrigue combine to draw Lucie and her family back to Paris. At the height of the Reign of Terror, the musical finds an unlikely hero in Carton, inspired by love to make an extraordinary sacrifice. The tuner features a book, music and lyrics by Jill Santoriello.

The show, once scheduled to open in New York on April 27, 2006, is now aiming for a fall Broadway berth.