Canadian Stage Company in Toronto will throw Larry's Party, a world premiere musical starring Tony Award winner Brent Carver, in its 2000-2001 season.
Carver, a Canadian theatre veteran who won a Tony Award for coming south of the border in Broadway's Kiss of the Spider Woman, will play the title character and Robin Phillips (Jekyll & Hyde on Broadway, Aspects of Love on tour) will direct.
Phillips and Carver have been linked to the Stratford Festival and other Canadian resident companies for years. Performances begin Jan. 11, 2001.
Carver appeared in the November 1999 reading of the new show, which is drawn from the 1997 novel by Carol Shields. Book and lyrics are by Richard Ouzounian, with a score by Marek Norman. They both collaborated on the Stratford Festival's popular 1999 staging of the musical, Dracula.
Ouzounian and Norman also wrote the hit musical adaptation of "Emily of New Moon," called Emily, staged in 1999 at the Charlottetown Theatre Festival on Prince Edward Island. *
Canadian Stage commissioned the Nov. 15-25, 1999, workshop and reading of Larry's Party. Ouzounian directed. Carver played a 50-year-old designer of garden mazes who looks back on his past 25 years and throws a party for the people in his life.
Ouzounian told Playbill On-Line the show's score reflects the musical styles of the decades Larry passes through.
The private workshop cast included Barbara Barsky, Elizabeth Beeler, Benedict Campbell, David Keeley, Monique Lund, Judy Marshak, Mike Nadajewski and Paula Wolfson.
Carver, who was also nominated for a Best Actor Tony for Parade in 1999, will return to the Stratford Festival in summer 2000 for Fiddler on the Roof, directed by Broadway's Susan Schulman.
Novelist Shields may be best known for her book, "The Stone Diaries."
-- By Kenneth Jones
