Casting has been announced for Jordan Harrison's Doris to Darlene: A Cautionary Valentine, the next mainstage production for Playwrights Horizons. The play with music by The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin composer Kirsten Childs starts performances on November 16.
Featured in the cast are de'Adre Aziza Passing Strange, David Chandler Lost in Yonkers, Death of a Salesman, The American Clock on Broadway, Michael Crane, Laura Heisler People Be Heard at Playwrights Horizons, Coram Boy on Broadway, Tom Nelis currently in Iphigenia 2.0 at Second Stage and Tobias Segal a Barrymore Award winner for Equus. Obie Award winner Les Waters, who recently directed Eurydice at Second Stage, directs.
Billed as "a time-jumping pop fairy tale about the dreams and disasters behind one transcendent song," Doris to Darlene: A Cautionary Valentine is set in the candy-colored 1960s, where a biracial schoolgirl named Doris is being molded into pop star Darlene by a whiz-kid record producer. Rewind to the candy-colored 1860s, where Richard Wagner is writing the melody that will become Darlene's hit song and then fast-forward to the not-so-candy-colored present, where a teenager obsesses over Darlene's music-and his music teacher, creating a fascinating look at three very different decades.