Wong will be the Leading Player, the omniscient narrator part created by Ben Vereen on Broadway. As such, he will sing "Magic to Do," "Glory," and "On the Right Track." Ziemba, meanwhile, will play Pippin's sexy, scheming stepmother Fastrada, who sings the choice track, "Spread a Little Sunshine."
No other casting has been announced.
Jack Hofsiss will direct the musical, which will conclude the season. Joey McKneeley (The Boy From Oz) will choreograph. John McDaniel will be music director.
Bob Fosse directed and choreographed the original 1972 Broadway production of Pippin, imposing his conceptual vision onto the bittersweet fairytale that Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson created. John Rubinstein played the searching Pippin ("Corner of the Sky," "With You"), Jill Clayburgh was his love interest ("I Guess I'll Miss the Man," "Kind of Woman"), Leland Palmer his evil stepmother and Irene Ryan was Pippin's feisty grandmother ("No Time At All"). The show ran 1,944 performances.
In other news, Sharon Lawrence, Edward Hibbert, Mark Blum, Gammy Singer, Cynthia Watros and Gabriel Nussbaum will make up the cast of a new revival of S.N. Behrman's No Time For Comedy at Bay Street Theatre. The show will run from June 14 to July 3.
No Time for Comedy is Behrman's 1939 drawing room comic drama about the need for laughter during dire times. Gaylord Easterbrook, a successful playwright, is having a career crisis. With war on the horizon and the world in turmoil, he is convinced there is no place on the stage for the brand of comedy he specializes in—much to the consternation of his wife Linda, who typically stars in her husband's plays. Egged on by his new mistress, Amanda, he has decided to write a tragedy set in Spain. Linda is unable to similarly inspire her spouse until she realizes that the tragic episode the three of them are currently experiencing might make for a very good Easterbrook play indeed.
Katharine Cornell starred as Linda in the original Broadway production, with Laurence Olivier as Gaylord. Amanda was played by Margolo Gillmore, who played Mary in the original The Women and was mistress Kay Thorndyke in State of the Union.
Lawrence is known to TV audiences from "NYPD Blue." On stage, she has appeared in Tongue of a Bird and Chicago. Blum is the theatre veteran of Lost in Yonkers, The Best Man and The Triple Happiness. Hibbert's comic skills have been seen in Noises Off and Once Upon a Mattress.
This is Gerroll's fifth production at Bay Street, after such efforts as Rough Crossing and Blithe Spirit. As an actor, he has played roles in New York stagings of Enchanted April, Shanghai Moon, House and Garden, The Importance of Being Earnest, An Experiment With an Air Pump, Psychopathia Sexualis and Three Birds Alighting on a Field.
