New York City
The musical’s first-ever Broadway production makes it into the library’s historical records.
The Broadway revival of Dames at Sea, set to close on Sunday, January 3, 2016, will be filmed for the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The filming will take place during the Tuesday, December 15 performance.
Dames at Sea opened at the Helen Hayes Theatre on Thursday, October 22 and will end its run having played 32 preview and 85 regular performances. Featuring music by Jim Wise and a book and lyrics by George Haimsohn and Robin Miller, the shpw is a parody of the 1930s Busby Berkeley-style movie musicals. The story follows Ruby, fresh off the bus in Manhattan, as she gets her first New York musical role — only to find out, along with the rest of the cast, that the theater is about to be demolished on opening night.
Directed and choreographed by Randy Skinner, Dames at Sea stars John Bolton (A Christmas Story) as The Captain/Hennesey, Mara Davi (A Chorus Line) as Joan, Danny Gardner (Lady, Be Good!) as Lucky, Eloise Kropp (On the Town) as Ruby, Olivier Award winner Lesli Margherita (Matilda The Musical) as Mona Kent, and Cary Tedder (Honeymoon in Vegas) as Dick.
The original production of Dames at Sea opened off-off-Broadway in 1966 at the Caffe Cino, before moving to off-Broadway's Bouwerie Lane Theatre in 1968. It transferred to the Theater de Lys (now the Lucille Lortel) in 1969, before launching a run in London's West End. The New York productions launched the career of young Bernadette Peters, who received a Drama Desk Award nomination of her performance as Ruby.
The show's first national tour will begin in the fall of 2017.