Peter Bartlett to Join David Pittu in What's That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling

Peter Bartlett will star opposite two-time Tony Award nominee David Pittu in the Atlantic Theater Company's world premiere production of What's That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling. As previously announced, Neil Pepe will co-direct what's billed as a "comedy with music," written and co-directed by Pittu and featuring original music by Randy Redd. Previews will begin at Atlantic Stage 2 on September 2 for a limited-engagement opening September 10, and running through September 28.

What's That Smell documents the career of Jacob Sterling Pittu—a fictitious, always up-and-coming musical-theater composer with questionable gifts, who performs from his songbook and shares his ongoing struggle to keep the musical alive in the 21st century. Barlett's character is the host of a musical theater talk show who interviews Sterling. A three-character ensemble will be announced shortly.

Bartlett developed What's That Smell with Pittu during the Perry-Mansfield New Works Festival this summer. He was most recently seen on the New York stage in Paul Rudnick's The New Century at Lincoln Center Theater, and on Broadway in The Drowsy Chaperone. Bartlett's other Broadway credits include The Frogs, Never Gonna Dance and Beauty and the Beast. Off-Broadway he's appeared in the Rudnick comedies The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told; Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach; Rude Entertainment and Jeffrey. On television, he plays Nigel on One Life to Live.