James Barbour, last seen on Broadway as the dark and brooding Rochester in Jane Eyre, next plays the light, but brooding Actor in the musical Enter the Guardsman, playing Sept. 2-Oct. 13 at the Globe Theatre's Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. Enter the Guardsman replaced a production of Lone Star Love at the San Diego venue.
Barbour's other Broadway credits include the Beast in Beauty and the Beast, Billy Bigelow in Carousel and Cyrano the Musical. Southern California audiences have seen him in Beauty and the Beast, Jane Eyre at La Jolla Playhouse and the new musical, The Gift in Los Angeles.
Joining him in the cast are Suzan Hanson (The Actress), The Sound of Music's Fred Applegate (The Playwright), Trey Hohman (Assistant Stage Manager), Joan Ryan (The Dresser), Vicki Van Tassel (The Wardrobe Mistress) and Jamie Torcellini (The Wigmaster).
Michael Donald Edwards directs. Edwards helmed the West Coast premiere of Shopping and Fucking as well as several operas in Australia and many works of Shakespeare for Shakespeare Santa Cruz, where he was artistic director for seven years.
Dan Mojica will choreograph. Jim Vukovich will serve as the musical director. Set in Vienna at the turn of the century, Enter the Guardsman tests faithfulness and love with dashing charm. When a theatre's leading actor begins to feel that his marriage to the theatre's leading lady is losing its passion, he decides to offer his temperamental wife an irresistible proposition - love from a handsome guardsman mad for her - but played by himself, of course, in a ruse crafted by a playwright and the theatre's staff. Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar's classic romantic farce The Guardsman is the basis for Enter the Guardsman. Scott Wentworth wrote the book with lyrics by his wife, Marion Adler. Craig Bohmler, their collaborator on the musical Gunmetal Blues, wrote the score.
Designing the show are Scott Bradley (sets), B. Modern (costumes) and Robert Jared (lighting). Joel Rosen is the stage manager.
Tickets are $25-$45. The Globe Theatres are located in Balboa Park. For reservations, call (619) 239 2255. The Globe Theatres are on the web at http://www.theglobetheatres.org.
— By Christine Ehren
