Belcon, Champlin, Cooper, Larsen, Strickland, Walsh et al. Cast in 2008 NYMF Shows

Preliminary casting has been announced for select shows in the 2008 New York Musical Theatre Festival. The fifth annual festival, which runs September 15-October 5, will include 24 full productions, a dance series, a developmental series, concerts and special events.

Barbara Walsh and Pamela Myers are among the cast members in About Face, which is suggested by Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and set in 1955 amid the sexually charged hijinks of Whittney College. Brian Charles Rooney stars in Bedbugs, a futuristic rock musical about an exterminator hell-bent on avenging her mother’s freak death; Elena Shaddow and Jay Rogers are featured in Idaho!, a spoof of one of Broadway’s most beloved classics; and Liz Larsen and Austin Miller are cast in The Jerusalem Syndrome, which explores the real psychological phenomenon that makes ordinary tourists in Jerusalem come to believe they are figures from the Bible.

Donna Lynne Champlin and Harris Doran are in the cast of Megan Gogerty’s Love Jerry, which explores the long-term effects of child abuse on a family. Brooke Sunny Moriber and Ann Morrison head the cast of William Zeffiro’s The Road to Ruin, (The 1928 Exploitation Musical), about Little Sally Canfield, “The Nicest Girl at Central High.”

Josh Strickland and Sally Mayes will headline the 1950’s set jazz musical Play It Cool; Lisa Asher will star in the country music-flavored Heaven in My Pocket; and Chuck Cooper, Natalie Venetia Belcon, and Adam Halpin star in Matt Gould’s Twilight in Manchego, to be directed by Billy Porter, about a tragedy in a small town.

For more information, visit www.nymf.org.