New York Theatre Workshop's (NYTW) Production of Claudia Shear's Dirty Blonde, a play about two single New Yorkers who meet at Mae West's grave site, will begin previews Dec. 13 and open Jan. 13.
Dirty Blonde's cast includes Kevin Chamberlin, playwright Claudia Shear and Robert Stillman.
The play marks Shear's return to NYTW, where she triumphed in 1993 with her one-woman "tour de résumé" Blown Sideways , a 64-job search for employment. That earned her an Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award nomination. Shear has numerous film, television and theatre credits and is widely published. The show will be helmed by James Lapine, who collaborated with Stephen Sondheim as both librettist and director on the Broadway productions of Passion, Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with George. With William Finn, he collaborated on off Broadway's March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, which were later produced together on Broadway as Falsettos, and on A New Brain
. He wrote the book and directed the musical The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which had its premiere in Berlin, Germany earlier this year. Lapine is the recipient of four Tony Awards, four Drama Desk Awards, two New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, the Outer Critics Circle Award, London's Olivier Award, two London Evening Standard Awards, the George Oppenheimer Playwriting Award, the Obie Award and the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Dirty Blonde will be presented by NYTW, under the auspices of artistic director James C. Nicola and managing director Jo Beddoe.
Set designs are by Doug Stein, costume design by Susan Hilferty, lighting design by David Lander and sound design is by Daniel Moses Schreier. The New York Theatre Workshop is an off-Broadway theatre company dedicated to developing new plays and playwrights, directors, and the nurturing of solo performing artists. Past NYTW productions include Caryl Churchill's Owners and Traps, Claudia Shear's Blown Sideways Through Life, Tony Kushner's Slavs!, Doug Wright's Quills, David Rabe's A Question of Mercy, Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking, Eugene O'Neill's More Stately Mansions, Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical, Rent, by Jonathan Larson. Dirty Blonde plays at NYTW at 79 East 4 Street, between Bowery and Second Avenue. The play opens for previews Dec. 13 and officially on Jan. 13. Tickets are $45 ($28 for seniors; $12 for full-time students) and are available by phoning the NYTW box office at (212) 460-5475. NYTW continues its CHEAPTIX program, offering limited $10 discounted tickets two hours before show.
