Tops is the Limit! Rachel York and Brent Barrett Set to Star in a Reprise! of Anything Goes
Broadway stars Rachel York and Brent Barrett will have the leading roles of Reno Sweeney and Billy Crocker when the L.A. Reprise! series presents Cole Porter’s Anything Goes at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, September 17-29.
Anything Goes originally opened on Broadway in 1934, with a score by Porter and a book by Guy Bolton, P.G. Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay, and Russel Crouse; Ethel Merman created the role of Reno Sweeney. Reprise! will present the show in a revised version, with a new book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman, that was created for and presented at Lincoln Center Theater in a 1987 production starring Patti LuPone and Howard McGillin. The cast of the Reprise! mounting includes Jason Graae as Moonface Martin, Sally Struthers as Evangeline Harcourt, and Fred Willard as Elisha Whitney.
The score of the show includes such hits as “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “You’re the Top,” and the ever-popular title song. Anything Goes will be directed for Reprise! by Glenn Casale, with musical direction by Gerald Sternbach and choreography by Dan Mojica.
Reprise! began six seasons ago as a series of classic American musicals presented in concert form, modeled after the enormously successful City Center Encores! series in New York. Now, according to a press release, “the scope of Reprise! productions has grown considerably; rehearsal time has doubled, costumes and scenery have increased, and orchestras have been enlarged…the productions are now completely staged and choreographed.”
The series’ producing artistic director is Marcia Seligon. Reprise! very recently lost its resident musical director with the death of Peter Matz, the highly respected conductor-arranger-composer. Click here to access TheaterMania’s obit on Matz.
