The show, to be directed by Scott Schwartz (Golda's Balcony, Bat Boy), has music and lyrics by Jeffrey Stock (Triumph of Love) and book and lyrics by Marc Acito (whose novels include "How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater" and its sequel, "Attack of the Theater People").
A Room With a View will run in the Old Globe Theatre, part of the Conrad Prebys Theatre Center, March 2-April 8, 2012. Opening night is March 10.
According to The Old Globe, "A Room With a View blends a gorgeous score with the timeless story that inspired the Academy Award-winning film. Amid the golden sunlight and violet-covered hills of Tuscany, sheltered English girl Lucy Honeychurch meets freethinking George Emerson and for the first time glimpses a world of longing and passion she had never imagined. Upon her return to her corseted Edwardian life, Lucy must decide whether to yield to convention or give up everything she has ever known."
Old Globe executive producer Lou Spisto said in a statement, "I really believe in this work, and I think our audience will enjoy being part of its launch. The score is stunning, and the story feels so right as a stage musical — these characters really do need to sing."
Casting and additional creative team will be announced. Acito's play Birds of a Feather, which tells the true story of the nationwide controversy caused by gay penguins in the Central Park Zoo, will receive its world premiere at The Hub Theatre in Fairfax, VA, in July 2011. He also co-wrote with award-winning screenwriter C.S. Whitcomb the twisted Christmas comedy Holidazed, which ran for two seasons at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, OR.
With composer Amy Engelhardt, he has created Bastard Jones, a rock musical adaptation of Henry Fielding's raucous "The History of Tom Jones." A former professional opera singer, Acito regularly performs "singing commentaries" on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."
Stock composed the music for the Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical Triumph of Love, starring Betty Buckley, F. Murray Abraham and Susan Egan. The show was named by USA Today as the Best New Musical of 1997-98. Stock's symphonic and choral commission Lulie the Iceberg premiered at Carnegie Hall featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma and narrated by Sam Waterston. Stock received the Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition and the Jonathan Larson Grant. He was one of the composers of the Off-Broadway musical Songs From an Unmade Bed, which was presented to great acclaim at New York Theatre Workshop. He wrote the music and libretto for The Voice of Temperance, an operetta based on Prohibition texts, commissioned by The Public Theater in 1995. Stock also received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to write the score and libretto for a new opera based on Boccaccio's "Decameron," entitled Lodovico.
Tickets to A Room With a View and the Globe's previously announced 2011-12 season are currently available by subscription only. Visit www.TheOldGlobe.org.
