Mario Cantone, Michael Cerveris, Harriet Harris, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Andrea Martin, et al. Set for Powerhouse Season

New York Stage and Film and Vassar College have announced additional casting for the 2011 Powerhouse season.

Michael Cerveris, Michael Esper, and Harriet Harris will be featured in the new musical The Nightingale (July 8-10), featuring book and lyrics by Steven Sater, music by Duncan Sheik, and direction by Moisés Kaufman. The show is a contemporary musical rendering of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale of a young emperor who finds his heart in the song of a small grey bird — and in the soul of a common servant girl — far beyond the walls of the Forbidden City.

Santino Fontana and Cristin Milioti will star in a concert reading of February House (July 14-16), with music & lyrics by Gabriel Kahane, book by Seth Bockley, and direction by Davis McCallum. The musical is about a bohemian commune for the leading lights of 1940s New York, including novelist Carson McCullers, composer Benjamin Britten, poet W.H. Auden, and the infamous Gypsy Rose Lee.

Rob Morrow will star in a semi-staged workshop of Handball (July 15-17), by Seth Zvi Rosenfeld, in which a handball court earmarked to become a dog run becomes a battlefield in a quickly gentrifying neighborhood.

Rebecca Naomi Jones, Daniel Oreskes, and Austin Lysy will appear in a fully staged production of A Maze (July 20-July 31), by Rob Handel, directed by Sam Buntrock. In it, a graphic novelist struggles to complete his 15,000 page comic book, a musician searches for the inspiration for his next hit, and a young girl strives to recreate her identity after years in captivity.

The concert reading of Piece of My Heart (July 28-31) will feature de’Adre Aziza, Linda Hart, and Jarrod Spector. The piece is a bio-musical of the composer Bert Berns, with music and lyrics by Berns, book by Daniel Goldfarb, Bert Berns and Cassandra Berns, and direction by Leigh Silverman.

Laila Robins and Samantha Mathis will be featured in Joanna Murray-Smith’s Day One, A Hotel Room, Evening, which is within the Readings Festival 1 (June 24-26), along with Playground: The Hallie Flanagan Project by Mattie Brickman; Rising Returns by Daniel MacIvor; and Rivers of January by Ben Snyder.
Andrea Martin will star in Mona Mansour’s This Hour of Feeling in Reading Festival 2 (July 29-31), which also includes The Public by Ed Hime; Matty’s Place by Frank Pugliese; Marry Harry by Jennifer Robbins, Michael Biello & Dan Martin; and Sleeping Demon by John Patrick Shanley.

As previously reported, the cast for Emmy Award winner Patricia Wettig’s play F2M (June 29 – July 10), directed by Maria Mileaf, will include Talia Balsam, Harriett D. Foy, Keira Keeley, Ken Olin, Deirdre O’Connell, and Phoebe Strole, and Mario Cantone will star as Craig Russell in David Solomon’s Margaret and Craig (July 1-3), directed by Sheryl Kaller.

For additional details on the Powerhouse season, see our previous story.