McCarthy, Skinner, Moore, Ramey and De Jesus Will Star in Mufti Zorba

By Andrew Gans
September 6, 2007

Complete casting has been announced for Zorba, which will kick off the fall Musicals in Mufti series at the York Theatre Company.

Heading the cast in the title role will be Urinetown's Jeff McCarthy, who made his Broadway debut in the 1983 revival of Zorba in the role of Nikos. McCarthy will be joined onstage by Emily Skinner as The Leader, Crista Moore as The Widow, Aaron Ramey as Nikos and Robin De Jesus as Mikiko. The ensemble will comprise Raymond Bokhour, Jane Brockman, Joseph Cullinane, Vince D'Elia, Denis Lambert, Ken McMullen, Tina Stafford and Deone Zanotto.

Steven Yuhasz will direct Zorba, which will be presented Sept. 14-16. Patrick Vaccariello will be the musical director. The musical, according to press notes, "is set in Crete in 1924 and is about the friendship between Zorba and Nikos, a young American student who has inherited an abandoned mine on Crete, and their romantic relationships with a local widow and French woman – Hortense, respectively. "

Zorba, based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, features a score by John Kander and the late Fred Ebb and a book by Joseph Stein. All four fall Mufti offerings boast a book by Stein. The series will continue with Enter Laughing: The Musical (Sept. 28-30), The Body Beautiful (Oct. 12-14) and The Baker's Wife (Oct. 26-28).

Five performances of each show will be presented: Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 2:30 and 8 PM and Sundays at 2:30 and 7:30 PM. Audience discussions follow the matinee performances.

The Mufti series is presented at the Theatre at Saint Peter's, which is located at 54th Street, east of Lexington Avenue. For more information or to purchase tickets, call (212) 935-5820 or visit www.yorktheatre.org.

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"Mufti" means "in street clothes, without the usual trappings."