Danny Burstein and Ron Raines Will Join Bernadette Peters in Kennedy Center Follies | Playbill

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News Danny Burstein and Ron Raines Will Join Bernadette Peters in Kennedy Center Follies Danny Burstein will play Buddy Plummer, and Ron Raines will be Benjamin Stone in the Kennedy Center's upcoming production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies.

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Danny Burstein Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

The two actors join the previously announced two-time Tony winner Bernadette Peters as Sally, Terrence Currier as Theodore Whitman, Rosalind Elias as Heidi Schiller, Florence Lacey as Sandra Crane, Linda Lavin as Hattie Walker, Jan Maxwell as Phyllis Rogers Stone, Elaine Paige as Carlotta Campion, Régine as Solange LaFitte, David Sabin as Dimitri Weismann, Susan Watson as Emily Whitman and Terri White as Stella Deems.

The production has been extended two weeks and will now run May 7-June 19, 2011, in the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater.

Signature Theatre artistic director Eric Schaeffer will direct the classic musical with choreography by Warren Carlyle (Finian's Rainbow). Additional casting will be announced at a later date.

James Moore will serve as music director and will conduct the 28-piece Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra.

The production will feature scenic design by Derek McLane, costume design by Gregg Barnes, lighting design by Natasha Katz and sound design by Peter Hylenski. The musical will utilize Jonathan Tunick's original orchestrations. Perhaps best-known for his many years as Alan Spaulding in the CBS daytime drama "Guiding Light," Ron Raines' stage roles include the Broadway and/or national tours of Chicago, Teddy & Alice, Show Boat, The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Can-Can. Opera patrons have seen his work in Die Fledermaus as well as opposite Dame Cleo Laine in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Raines has also performed with symphony orchestras throughout the country, and his solo recording is entitled "Ron Raines: Broadway Passion."

Danny Burstein, who was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance as Luther Billis in the recent Broadway revival of South Pacific, was also Tony-nominated for his work in The Drowsy Chaperone. His other Broadway credits include Saint Joan, The Seagull, Three Men on a Horse, A Little Hotel on the Side, The Flowering Peach, A Class Act, Titanic and Company. He is currently back on Broadway in the new musical Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

Follies concerns a group of former "Follies" stars who return to the site of their former glory, the Weismann Theatre, which is about to be demolished. Old wounds resurface as two Follies stars (Phyllis and Sally) and their husbands (Benjamin and Buddy) reassess their lives and what could have been.

Follies, with songs by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Goldman, was originally directed by Harold Prince on Broadway in 1971. Since then, it has received a legendary star-filled concert at Lincoln Center in 1985, a Roundabout revival on Broadway directed by Matthew Warchus in 2001, a City Center Encores! production in 2007 and numerous regional mountings, including a Paper Mill Playhouse engagement that featured Donna McKechnie and the late Ann Miller.

Among the show's many song titles are "Beautiful Girls," "Don't Look at Me," "Waiting for the Girls Upstairs," "Rain on the Roof," "Ah, Paris!," "Broadway Baby," "The Road You Didn't Take," "Bolero d'Amour," "In Buddy's Eyes," "Who's That Woman?," "I'm Still Here," "Too Many Mornings," "The Right Girl," "One More Kiss," "Could I Leave You?," "Loveland," "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow," "Love Will See Us Through," "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues," "Losing My Mind," "The Story of Lucie and Jessie" and "Live, Laugh, Love."

 

Performances will take place Tuesday through Saturday evenings in the Eisenhower Theater at 7:30 PM. Beginning May 11, matinee performances on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons will run at 1:30 PM. Tickets starting at $45 will go on sale on Jan. 30, 2011, at noon at the Kennedy Center box office or by calling Instant Charge at (202) 467-4600. Patrons living outside the Washington metropolitan area may dial toll-free at (800) 444-1324 or visit www.kennedy-center.org.

 
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