Charles Busch's Auntie Mame Says Bye-Bye to Sag Harbor, Aug. 1; New York Next? | Playbill

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News Charles Busch's Auntie Mame Says Bye-Bye to Sag Harbor, Aug. 1; New York Next? Charles Busch, the playwright and performer known for his peerless comic impersonations of the opposite sex, will bring his Northeast mini-tour of Auntie Mame to a close on Aug. 1, when a stint at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, Long Island, concludes.
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Charles Busch

The production began on July 14. Before Bay Street, the fateful match of play and actor enjoyed a June 28-July 10 run at Maine's storied summer stock landmark, the Ogunquit Playhouse. The co-production with the Bay Street Theatre is directed by Richard Sabellico.

Also in the cast are Penny Fuller, Tolan Aman, Kerrie Blaisdell, Jennifer Harmon, Michael McCormick, Gordana Rashovich, Victor Slezak, Patrick Ryan Sullivan and Max von Essen.

The set and costume design were handled by Busch's longtime designers Michael Bottari and Ronald Case. Busch reportedly has 16 costume changes in the show.

The show is widely expected to reach New York City sometime in the coming season.

Busch plays the larger-than-life madcap Mame, who famously lives her life as a banquet and charges her impressionable orphaned nephew to "Live!" The show was a hit in 1956 for playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, who adapted the work from the novel by Patrick Dennis, and has since become a camp classic with a passionately worshipful following, particularly within the gay community. It inspired both a movie, with Rosalind Russell, and the Jerry Herman musical Mame. Busch starred in a sold-out all-star benefit performance of the comedy in New York Nov. 24, 2003. Christopher Sieber co-starred as Patrick Dennis, and the cast also included Marian Seldes (Vera Charles), Michael Berresse (Ralph Devine), Sarah Uriarte Berry (Gloria Upson) Charles Kimbrough (Mr. Upson) Beth Howland (Mrs. Upson), Swoosie Kurtz (Agnes Gooch), Alison Fraser (Nora Muldoon), Charles Shaughnessy (Brian O'Bannion), Douglas Sills (M. Lindsay Woolsey), B.D. Wong (Ito), Dylan Baker (Mr. Babcock) and T.J. Larke (Young Patrick Dennis).

Sabellico directed the benefit, as he did a 2002 Ogunquit staging of Busch's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife.

Aside from the benefit, Busch most recently donned a dress in the Drama Dept. Off-Broadway staging of his Shanghai Moon. Busch's other playwright-actor credits include Vampire Lesbians in Sodom, The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset and Queen Amarantha.

 
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