By Matt Windman
08 Sep 2006
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| Christopher Fitzgerald |
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
Christopher Fitzgerald and Jeremy Shamos will star in Gutenberg! The Musical!, the new two-person musical comedy about the inventor of the printing press — and the showfolk writing a musical about him — in the 2006 New York Musical Theatre Festival.
Performances are Sept. 20-30 at the Sage Theatre, 711 Seventh Ave.
Not a simple biography of Johann Gutenberg, Gutenberg! The Musical is the story of Bud Davenport and Doug Simon, writers who attempt to bring a musical about Johann Gutenberg to Broadway. The show takes place at their backers' audition. With an unending supply of enthusiasm and idiocy, and accompanied by their pianist Larry, Bud and Doug sing all the songs and play all the parts in their crass historical epic, using only baseball caps to differentiate between the show's 30 characters.
Christopher Fitzgerald (Bud Davenport) has appeared on Broadway in the original companies of Wicked and Amour (Drama Desk nomination); and Off-Broadway in Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Fully Committed, Saturday Night, Wise Guys, Babes In Arms, Corpus Christi and The Cripple of Inishmaan.
Jeremy Shamos (Doug Simon) has appeared on Broadway in Reckless and The Rivals. His Off-Broadway credits include Miss Witherspoon, Engaged, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), Hamlet, Cymbeline, Race, The Alchemist, Stranger and Corpus Christi.
The writing team includes Anthony King, the artistic director of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York, and Scott Brown, a regular UCB actor and Entertainment Weekly writer.
(Playbill.com is a media partner of the New York Musical Theatre Festival 2006.)
For more information and to buy tickets, visit the
2006 New York Musical Theatre
Festival website
