A Tale of Two Cities: In Concert to Be Filmed for Public Television

By Andrew Gans
and Kenneth Jones
May 26, 2009

A concert performance of the musical A Tale of Two Cities, which played a brief Broadway run this past season, will be filmed this summer at Theater Royal Brighton, England, for future broadcast on PBS, according to a press release from Jersey Wooly Productions.

WGBH-Boston will be the presenting station for the event, which is currently scheduled for broadcast in December 2009.

The cast will feature members of the original Broadway company as well as U.K. actors; casting will be announced shortly. The televised event will also include narrated segments filmed on location in London and Paris.

Emmy-nominated producer Bruce Marcus of Jersey Wooly Productions will executive produce the program.

A DVD and studio cast recording of the concert production will be available in late 2009, and the program will be distributed internationally in 2010.

The Broadway musical — based on the Charles Dickens novel — was shepherded by Broadway first-timers, including lead producers Barbra Russell and Ron Sharpe, director Warren Carlyle and lyricist-librettist-composer Jill Santoriello, a self-taught musician and alumna of the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop.

The New York company was headed by James Barbour, Brandi Burkhardt, Natalie Toro and Aaron Lazar.