Cast members from City of Angels, a Tony Award-winning film noir musical opening at Performance Works July 8.
Warm temperatures, bright blazing sunshine—that can only mean one thing in Vancouver: film noir season!
Next month, Cinematheque presents its annual programme of movies from the golden age (mostly) of Hollywood crime stories. We’ll have a post with more details on Monday.
Meanwhile, a group of committed local (and some out-of-town) actors, actresses and stage technicians are presenting City of Angels. It’s a Tony Award-winning stage musical with original songs and a book by professional wiseacre Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum). The Vancouver production of the musical, which first hit Broadway in 1989, stars veterans of television, movies and theatre, and opens at Performance Works on Granville Island on July 8. It runs until July 17.
The cast includes Michael Lomenda (Jersey Boys), Donal Thoms-Cappello, Jennifer Copping, Caitlin Clugston, Crystal Balint and Miranda MacDougall. Thoms-Cappello plays a New York crime novelist (Stine) lured to Hollywood to adapt his latest novel, starring fictional detective Stone (Lomenda), into a screenplay. But can he resist the City of Angels’ traps, including femme fatales, avaricious producers and quack doctors?
Donal Thoms-Cappello and Miranda MacDougall in City of Angels.
The stage production alternates between black-and-white and colour; for this production, the crew has filmed the black-and-white segments. A chorus called the Angel City 4 perform many of the songs, written by Broadway vets Cy Coleman and David Zippel. The quartet includes Janet Gigliotti, who recently completed a successful run playing Judy Garland in the Canadian premiere of End of the Rainbow.
Caitlin Clugston plays a nightclub singer in the musical City of Angels.
Tickets are $40 and available at cityofangels.brownpapertickets.com. Performance Works is at 1218 Cartwright St.
