Falsettos

Falsettos is a musical with a book by James Lapine and William Finn and music and lyrics by Finn. The musical consists of March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, the last two in a trio of one-act Off-Broadway plays (the first was In Trousers). The story involves Marvin, his ex-wife Trina, his psychiatrist Mendel, his son Jason, and his gay lover Whizzer Brown. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1992.

Productions

Original Broadway production

Falsettos opened on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre on April 29, 1992 and closed on June 27, 1993 after 487 performances and 23 previews. Directed by Lapine, the cast included Stephen Bogardus, Michael Rupert, Chip Zien, Carolee Carmello, Jonathan Kaplan, Heather MacRae, and Barbara Walsh. Scenic design was by Douglas Stein, costume design by Ann Hould-Ward, and lighting design by Frances Aronson.

Original Broadway Cast

Andrew Rannells

Andrew Scott Rannells (born August 23, 1978) is an American actor and singer. He is perhaps best known for his work as Elder Price in the 2011 Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, which earned him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. As a featured soloist on the musical's Original Broadway Cast Recording, he won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. His other Broadway credits include Jersey Boys, Hairspray, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Most recently he portrayed King George III in Lin-Manuel Miranda's new musical Hamilton, temporarily replacing Jonathan Groff in the role on Broadway.

Early life

Rannells was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Charlotte and the late Ronald Rannells. Rannells' father had a heart attack very suddenly in 2001 when Rannells was 22. He is the fourth of five siblings, with three sisters and an older brother. His family has an Irish and Polish background.

Rannells attended Our Lady of Lourdes grade school and then Creighton Prep, an all-boys Catholic school in Omaha. His family lived in the Hanscom Park neighborhood of Omaha.

Stephanie J. Block

Stephanie Janette Block (born September 19, 1972) is an American actress and singer, known for her work in Broadway musicals. A Tony Award nominee and four-time Drama Desk Award nominee, she has appeared on numerous cast recordings and released a solo album, This Place I Know in 2009. Her vocal range is mezzo-soprano.

Block began her professional musical career in regional theatre and by playing Belle in the Disneyland production of Beauty and the Beast in 1992. She made her Broadway debut in the 2003 original production of The Boy from Oz, playing Liza Minnelli. Having read the part of Elphaba in the first reading of Wicked in 2000, she was the first actress to play the role in the US touring production from 2005–06, winning the Helen Hayes Award for Best Actress in a Non-Resident production. She later reprised the role on Broadway from 2007-08. She received Drama Desk nominations for the Broadway productions of 9 to 5 (2009) and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (2012), and the Off-Broadway productions of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2011) and Little Miss Sunshine (2013). For Drood, she also received a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Musical.

Christian Borle

Christian Borle (born October 1, 1973) is an American actor featured in several Broadway productions. A two-time Tony Award winner for his roles in Peter and the Starcatcher as Black Stache and Something Rotten! as William Shakespeare, Borle also starred as Tom Levitt on the NBC musical-drama series Smash. In 2006, he was married to two-time Tony winner Sutton Foster until their divorce in 2010.

Early life

Borle was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Andre Bernard Borle, a Swiss a professor of physiology at the University of Pittsburgh. His love for Star Wars and drawing made him want to become a comic book artist when he grew up, but it was only when a friend convinced him to audition for a school play in his sophomore year that he began to develop an interest in acting.

He attended St. Edmund's Academy in Pittsburgh, where he played Scrooge in a 1987 production of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, but graduated from Shady Side Academy. He went on to attend Carnegie Mellon University before moving to New York in September 1995.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a 16.3-acre (6.6-hectare) complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City.

Planning

A consortium of civic leaders and others led by, and under the initiative of, John D. Rockefeller III built Lincoln Center as part of the "Lincoln Square Renewal Project" during Robert Moses's program of urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. Respected architects were contracted to design the major buildings on the site, and over the next thirty years the previously blighted area around Lincoln Center became a new cultural hub.

Rockefeller was Lincoln Center's inaugural president from 1956 and became its chairman in 1961. He is credited with raising more than half of the $184.5 million in private funds needed to build the complex, including drawing on his own funds; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also contributed to the project. The center's three buildings, David Geffen Hall, David H. Koch Theater (formerly the New York State Theater) and the Metropolitan Opera House were opened in 1962, 1964 and 1966, respectively.