Producer Eric Krebs has announced the cast for Little Ham, the planned Off-Broadway musical due at the John Houseman Theatre Sept. 12.

The show will feature Cheryl Alexander, D'Ambrose Boyd, Venida Evans, Carmen Ruby Floyd, Jerry Gallagher, Andre Garner, Julia Lema, Kevyn Morrow, Joy Styles, Lee Summers, Richard Vida and Joe Wilson, Jr.

Boyd, Evans, Floyd, Gallagher, Garner, Lema, Styles, Summers, Vida and Wilson all return from the 2001 production. Morrow and Alexander are new.

The Langston Hughes-inspired musical, billed as "a Harlem Jazzical," has been shepherded by Krebs since 1985, including a brief Off-Broadway tryout in late 2001 that tested the viability of a larger run this coming fall. Previews will begin Sept. 12 at the Houseman, with an opening slated for Sept. 26.

This most recent incarnation of the Dan Owens-Judd Woldin Richard Engquist musical began in an Off-Off-Broadway arrangement by Amas Musical Theatre Nov. 14, 2001, at the 99-seat Hudson Guild Theatre. Krebs gave the show an extension to an Off-Broadway contract to make refinements and offer the press more chances to see it. It closed Jan. 6 after earning encouraging reviews. The producer initiated the project in 1985 and took it through various drafts, including a 1987 staging at George Street Playhouse in New Jersey.

—By Robert Simonson
and Kenneth Jones