The Times reports that Tony winner Nathan Lane plans to star in the play that takes its title from a staple vaudeville character, an effeminate homosexual male, who was featured in burlesque sketches and films of the era. Lane (The Producers, Guys and Dolls, The Addams Family) has been part of readings of the play in recent years.

Set during New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's campaign to ban burlesque in the 1930's, Beane's plot places the action of the play in the Irving Theatre, which is where Off-Broadway's Vineyard Theatre now stands in Union Square.

O'Brien is the Tony-winning director of The Coast of Utopia and Hairspray. Beane was recently Tony-nominated for the book to Lysistrata Jones. He also penned The Little Dog Laughed, As Bees in Honey Drown and the books to the musicals Xanadu and Sister Act.

Lane also told the Times that a rumored fall Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh has cooled due to the financial hurdles of producing the work commercially.