Summer 2004 - BMI.com

their work-in-progress at a cabaret
for participating O’Neill theatre
artists.
Storyville is an original story set
in the final days of New Orleans’
notorious legalized red-light district.
Drawing on the rich musical
landscape at the dawning of the
Jazz Age, plus historical facts, personalities,
and urban myths, Storyville
is a journey of love and
redemption involving a powerful
and charismatic madam, her
young protegee, and the young
sailor whom they both love.
THEORY OF THE LEISURE
CLASS
An Irreverent Vaudeville Musical
Comedy, Book and Lyrics by
Charles Leipart, Music by Richard
B. Evans (Advanced) had a “table
reading with songs” presented by
the Abingdon Theatre on June 10,
2004. The cast featured Nick
Wyman (currently on Broadway in
Sly Fox) as Thorstein Veblen, with
Ian August, Jonathan Ball, J.
Claude Deering, Susan Derry
(Wonderful Town), Louisa
Flaningam, Amy Goldberger,
Nancy McGraw and Randy Redd.
VOICE OF THE CITY
As reported by Ernio Hernandez
in Playbill On-Line:
Voice of the City, a new romantic
musical comedy set in O. Henry’s
New York City, [had] its first public
reading May 13 as part of the
York Theatre Company’s Developmental
Reading Series.
Karen Azenberg direct[ed] the
15-actor show by lyricist-librettist
Kenneth Jones and composer
Elaine Chelton [both alumni].
Music direction [was] by Mary-
Mitchell Campbell.
Pieces of the show have been
heard in recent years in The BMI-
Lehman Engel Musical Theatre
Workshop, where Jones and Chelton
met. Chelton is a principal solo
pianist at New York City Ballet.
Jones is an editor at Playbill On-
Line.
“It’s a musical fable about a
woman who comes of age in Manhattan—a
city she never really got
to know until circumstances forced
her to face the world,” composer
Chelton said. “Since it’s set in
1906, and the characters vary so
widely in background, there’s a
variety of musical sounds in the
score, from rag to polka to Yiddish
lullaby to march, and more.”
Voice of the City is described as a
book musical with the kind of plot
twists expected of stories by turnof
the-century fiction writer O.
Henry (The Gift of the Magi). The
show is inspired by an O. Henry
short story called Springtime a la
Carte, about a typing girl named
Sarah who is torn between the
country and the city.
“In O. Henry’s Greenwich Village
of 1906, a typing girl expects a
farmer from Connecticut to whisk
her away from urban life, but
twists of fate and a community of
new friends show her the country
isn’t the only place where things
blossom,” according to the York
website. It’s “a romantic musical
comedy fable about reaching for
life instead of waiting around for
it.”
The reading cast includ[ed] Kate
10