42nd Street

One of Broadway’s most successful musicals ever is coming to Auckland for a strictly limited season.

The high-kicking, high-energy theatrical extravaganza that changed the face of Broadway musicals, will turn Auckland’s Civic, THE EDGE, into a dance hall of the grandest scale from October 2. Tickets will go on sale on July 7 and are priced for all the family to enjoy.

42nd Street is a big, bold musical set in 1933 that celebrates the stuff that dreams are made of. It’s a story of hard work, being in the right place at the right time, talent and love. It’s a celebration of Broadway and the people involved in shows.

Featuring dazzling costumes and set from the latest Broadway Revival, 42nd Street will bring the memories flooding back with hit show tunes including You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me, Dames, Only Have Eyes for You, Lullaby of Broadway, Shuffle Off to Buffalo, Forty-Second Street and We’re In the Money - lucky for many Kiwis as Lotto’s original jingle!

New Zealand-born star of international stage and television Derek Metzger plays famed dictatorial director Julian Marsh as he attempts to mount a successful stage production of “Pretty Lady” - a musical extravaganza at the height of the Great Depression.

42nd Street - proudly presented by Auckland Music Theatre, the company that recently bought us the critically acclaimed season of Rent - will feature some of New Zealand’s finest talents.

42nd Street was the first of three landmark musical films released in 1933 by Warner Bros to revitalise the musical film genre. In contrast to the fantasy, escapist romantic dance musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers that also began in the same year (Flying Down to Rio (1933)), this film was an unglamorised look at the tough realities of backstage life behind the footlights. The urban milieu of the film is filled with crisp, slangy, bitter dialogue and wisecracks, street-wise characters, topical references, desperately-striving chorines, dancers, and crew, and down-and-out references to the Depression.

Dubbed “backstage musical par excellence, the grand-daddy of them all”, the stage version of 42nd Street debuted on Broadway in 1980 and ran for eight years, becoming the second longest running American musical in Broadway history behind A Chorus Line. 42nd Street became the capstone of Broadway’s golden age.

Using the all-new Randy Skinner choreography, as seen in the Tony Award-winning 2001 Broadway revival, audiences will be treated to spectacular dance routines, starting with forty pairs of feet tap-dancing away as the curtain slowly rose for the first act as they did at that time.

Veteran New Zealand artist Suzanne Lee has been signed to play love-cheat, prima donna Dorothy Brock whose clumsiness opens the door for nervous-but-enthusiastic new chorus girl from out of town, Peggy Sawyer, to be played by Laura O’Sullivan who most recently won praise for her performance in Rent. Suzanne is fresh from playing understudy to Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard in Australia and has an extensive entertainment career in New Zealand that
includes Chicago, 12 Bar Rhythm & Shoes as well as impersonating Helen Clark. The charming leading tenor, Billy Lawlor, will be played by Melbourne based young heart-throb Lyndon Keenan, who recently played the lead role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in Christchurch.

Bert Barry and Maggie Jones - the producers and writers of “Pretty Lady” - will be played by Grant Bridger and Lynn Webster. Grant is a performer of some 25 years experience in New Zealand, and has toured extensively overseas, including Japan in Phantom of the Opera, and Australia and New Zealand in the critically-acclaimed version of Jesus Christ Superstar; while Lynn has toured extensively in theatre in America and Canada.

Event listed by Sandra Roberts

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