On Monday, January 21, Joe’s Pub was packed for The 24 Hour Musicals, a special benefit for the Orchard Project and the Exchange, for which almost two dozen actors, writers, directors and choreographers came together to create four short musicals in less than a day. Among the popular performers who participated were Jersey Boys‘ star Michael Longoria and Xanadu leading man Cheyenne Jackson.
Xanadu leading lady Kerry Butler and the hilarious Ashlie Atkinson played best friends in Joe Iconis’ and Jonathan Marc Sherman’s hilarious The Saddest Bar in the World
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, no stranger to playing sailors, played the seaman who came between the two women.
Gavin Creel played a baseball vendor and a frustrated manager in David Yazbek and Jonathan Bernstein’s Pinwheeling Freestyle.
Handsome Steven Pasquale — getting an admiring glance from fiancée Laura Benanti — played a pitcher facing an existential crisis on the mound.
Claudia Shear starred with Jackson, Victoria Clark, and John Ellison Conlee in Adam Bock and Todd Almond’s touching The Song of the Falling Man, about a woman in love with two brothers and an ill-fated mountain climbing exposition.
In Nellie McKay and Warren Leight’s very funny Partners, Brooks Ashmanskas played a drunk, world-famous entertainer who reunites with his former performing partner after 15 years.
The hilarious Denis O’Hare wowed the crowd with a song about “Olga from Volga”
The beautiful Tracie Thoms, back in New York while her CBS-TV drama Cold Case has stopped filming, was another member of the Partners cast.
The irrepressible McKay did double duty; she also played the bartender in The Saddest Bar in the World.
At the show’s after party, producer Ari Edelson got a congratulatory hug from family friend, Chris Lemmon.
Peter Dinklage, who recently starred in Jonathan Marc Sherman’s Things We Want at the New Group, was one of the party guests.
Here’s Josh Charles, who starred in Adam Bock’s The Receptionist at MTC.
Rosie Perez, who co-starred with Ashmanskas and Atkinson in the Roundabout’s revival of The Ritz, also made an appearance at the party.
