Cleale and Litzsinger Join Broadway's Amour; Casting Complete | Playbill

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News Cleale and Litzsinger Join Broadway's Amour; Casting Complete Lewis Cleale and Sarah Litzsinger are the latest additions to the company of the new musical Amour, which will bow on Broadway on Oct. 15 at the Music Box Theatre.

Lewis Cleale and Sarah Litzsinger are the latest additions to the company of the new musical Amour, which will bow on Broadway on Oct. 15 at the Music Box Theatre.

Cleale and Litzsinger join the previously announced cast members Melissa Errico, Malcolm Gets, Norm Lewis, John Cunnigham, Christopher Fitzgerald, Bill Nolte and Nora Mae Lyng.

Lewis Cleale starred as Joe Gillis opposite Petula Clark's Norma Desmond in the national tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard. He starred in the Broadway revival of Once Upon a Mattress and the City Center Encores! production of Call Me Madam; Off-Broadway Cleale appeared in William Finn's A New Brain. Sarah Litzsinger, who is currently starring as Belle in the Broadway company of Beauty and the Beast, starred as the Narrator in the Donny Osmond national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Her other Broadway credits include Les Misérables; Marilyn, An American Fable; and the Patti LuPone revival of Oliver!.

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Norm Lewis has starred on Broadway in Side Show, Miss Saigon and The Who's Tommy. He appeared in the national tour of Once On This Island and was also a part of the recent Dreamgirls benefit concert. John Cunnigham starred as Captain E.J. Smith in Maury Yeston's Tony-winning Titanic musical. His numerous Broadway credits include The Sisters Rosensweig, Six Degrees of Separation, Anna Karenina, Cabaret, Zorba, Company, 1776, The Good Doctor and California Suite. Christopher Fitzgerald was a part of the Second Stage's production of Saturday Night; his other Off-Broadway credits feature roles in Wise Guys, Corpus Christi and The Cripple of Inishmaan. Bill Nolte made his Broadway debut in Cats and has also appeared on The Great White Way in Me and My Girl, The Secret Garden, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, King David and 1776. He starred in the La Jolla production of Jane Eyre and the Goodspeed mounting of Man of La Mancha. Nora Mae Lyng was a member of the original company of Forbidden Broadway. She starred in the previous Broadway revival of Cabaret as well as the National Actors Theatre's production of Three Men On a Horse. Lyng's other stage credits include the Broadway companies ofLes Misérables and My Favorite Year as well as the national tour of Into the Woods. **

A translation of the hit French tuner Le Passe Muraille, the American version will be produced by The Shubert Organization, Jean Doumanian and USA Ostar Theatricals. The French musical featuring music by Michel Legrand has been translated by Jeremy Sams. Original French lyrics were written by Didier van Cauwelaert.

Tony winner James Lapine, who helmed Broadway's Dirty Blonde, Passion, Sunday in the Park with George and both the current and original productions of Into the Woods, will direct. Errico, who will star in the upcoming Kennedy Center production of Sunday in the Park, recently explained to Playbill On-Line how she won her role as Dot in the eagerly awaited Sondheim production: "I did a workshop of [Amour] with James Lapine for the Shuberts this past fall. [Composer] Michel [Legrand] is very good friends with Stephen Sondheim, so Sondheim came to see it, and that's how I got Dot."

Malcolm Gets, who appeared in the Lincoln Center production of A New Brain, will co-star with Errico.

Based on a French short story by Marcel Ayme, Amour is set in post World War II Paris and concerns the life of Dutilleul, a civil servant who discovers he has the ability to walk through walls. The French version, Le Passe Muraille, won the Prix Moliere for Best Musical in 1997, the equivalent of the Tony Award. Asked this past January about the show's American plans, Shubert Chairman Gerald Schoenfeld told PBOL, "It's a small musical, estimated in the $3-3.5 million range, but estimates are only that, made before negotiating all the deals."

Melissa Errico, who is currently performing at New York's Cafe Carlyle, starred on Broadway opposite Richard Chamberlain in My Fair Lady and made a splash in the City Center Encores! production of One Touch of Venus. She also headlined the short-lived musical High Society and was a series regular on CBS-TV's "Central Park West."

Malcolm Gets received an Obie Award and a Drama Desk nomination for his work in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along. His other stage credits include roles in Hello Again, The Molière Comedies, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Juno, Martin Guerre, A New Brain and the City Center Encores! staging of The Boys From Syracuse. Gets also starred on the NBC series "Caroline in the City."

Michel Legrand has composed over 200 film and television scores, including "Lady Sings the Blues," "Wuthering Heights" and "Ice Station Zebra." He has won three Academy Awards, five Grammys and an Emmy nomination, some of his best-known songs include several collaborations with Alan and Marilyn Bergman: "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?," "The Windmills of Your Mind" and "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?" as well as the score to Barbra Streisand's "Yentl."

Jeremy Sams wrote the book for the current London production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. As a director, his work includes the current Broadway production of Noises Off and the London productions of Schippel the Plumber; Neville's Island; Wild Oats; Marat/Sade; Enter the Guardsman; The Wind in the Willows; Two Pianos Four Hands; Spend, Spend, Spend; and Stephen Sondheim's Passion. His translations include Becket, The Rehearsal, The Miser, Mary Stuart, Les Parents Terribles (on Broadway as Indiscretions) and A Fool and His Money.

 
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