Listen to My Heart Rescinds Closing Notice

The Off-Broadway revue Listen to My Heart: The Songs of David Friedman has rescinded the closing notice that was posted earlier this week.

According to producer Victoria Lang, the show — which opened on Wednesday, October 23 — needed to sell 600 tickets to stay open past this Sunday, and that figure was reached in one day. Lang told TheaterMania.com that the show will now employ new marketing and audience development teams, that it will rely less heavily on traditional advertising and focus more on grass-roots efforts to build an audience. Listen to My Heart‘s celebrity supporters include Kathie Lee Gifford (who wrote the lyrics to one of the songs in the show, “Only My Pillow Knows”) and psychic John Edward. Lang says that Edward, who felt his mother speaking to him through one of Friedman’s songs, will devote two upcoming episodes of his popular television show Crossing Over to the show, its cast, and its performing space.

Lang also reported that one of the company members had a similarly other-worldly experience during a recent performance: While singing the song “We Can Be Kind,” Anne Runolfsson looked into the audience and believed that she saw the late cabaret star Nancy LaMott watching the show. (Prior to her death seven years ago, LaMott was a major interpreter and promoter of Friedman’s work.) “There are lots of ghosts in Studio 54,” Lang said. “Now Nancy’s watching over the show.”

Listen to My Heart will run at least through Sunday, November 23; Lang stressed that the show is currently operating on a week-to-week basis. In addition to Runolfsson and Friedman, the cast features Alix Korey, Allison Briner, Joe Cassidy, and Michael Hunsaker under the direction of Mark Waldrop. In their review of the show for TheaterMania, Barbara and Scott Siegel wrote that “Listen To My Heart: The Songs of David Friedman not only does justice to the eponymous writer’s work, it does justice to the expectations of a musical theater audience starved for the songwriting verities of the golden past.”