The Whirligig

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Sutton Foster to Lead 'Sweet Charity' Off-Broadway

Sutton Foster will return to the stage in "Sweet Charity."
The New Group's 2016-2017 season will begin in November with a revival of the 1966 musical "Sweet Charity," starring two-time Tony winner Sutton Foster ("Anything Goes," TV's "Younger").
The production will be timed to the 50th anniversary of the classic musical, which features a book by Neil Simon, with music and lyrics by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, respectively. Leigh Silverman ("Violet") directs, with choreography by Joshua Bergasse ("On the Town").
This won't be the first time Sutton has performed "Charity." The actress famously sang "If My Friends Could See My Now" in the season 1 finale of her now-canceled show "Bunheads."
Closing out The New Group's season in May 2017 will be Maura Tierney ("Lucky Guy," TV's "The Affair") and Zosia Mamet (TV's "Girls") in the world premiere production of "The Whirligig." The play marks the playwriting debut from actor Hamish Linklater ("Seminar," TV's "The New Adventures of Old Christine").
The play, directed by Scott Elliott ("Avenue Q"), casts Tierney as a mom caring for her estranged, drug-addicted daughter. Mamet plays the daughter's lost friend, desperate to reconnect before it's too late.
In between, Elliot will direct another play for The New Group by an actor/playwright -- Wallace Shawn's "Evening at the Talk House." Shawn, known as an actor for roles in "Clueless" and "The Princess Bride," premiered the play in 2015 at the National Theatre, and tells the story of a group of actors who reunite on the 10th anniversary of the opening of their flop play. Previews begin in January, with a run through March.
Erica Schmidt's "All the Fine Boys" will make its world premiere in February. The play is set in suburban South Carolina in the late '80s, and tells the story of two 14-year-old girls and the adventures the two best friends they have while they begin dating.
All productions in The New Group's season take place at the Pershing Square Signature Center, at 480 West 42nd Street. Subscriptions and memberships are now on sale at www.thenewgroup.org.

www.nbcnewyork.com/entertainment/the-scene/Sutton-Foster-to-Lead-Sweet-Charity-Off-Broadway-380011381.html

Sutton Foster Will Headline Sweet Charity Revival for New Group; Full Off-Broadway Season Announced
NEWS By Ryan McPhee May 18, 2016 - 3:50PM

'Sweet Charity' will begin performances in November.
Two-time Tony winner Sutton Foster will headline a 50th anniversary revival of Sweet Charity this fall. The production will kick off the New Group’s 2016-17 off-Broadway season. Also on the lineup is the U.S. premiere of Wallace Shawn's Evening at the Talk House and world premieres by Erica Schmidt and Hamish Linklater.

Sweet Charity will begin performances in November. Leigh Silverman, who directed Foster in the recent revival of Violet, is set to helm the production; Joshua Bergasse will choreograph. The Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields and Neil Simon musical follows the romantic ups and downs of Charity, a dance hall performer in Times Square. The tuner premiered on Broadway in 1966 and was last revived in New York in 2005.

Foster’s stage credits include Tony-winning turns in Anything Goes and Thoroughly Modern Millie, as well as Violet, Shrek, Young Frankenstein and The Drowsy Chaperone. Fans can catch her as 40-year-old-but-pretending-to-be-26 Liza Miller on TV Land’s Younger, which is set to return for a third season next year, as well as the upcoming Netflix revival of Gilmore Girls.

Beginning January 2017, the New Group will present Shawn’s Evening at the Talk House, helmed by artistic director Scott Elliott. The play explores the reunion of a group of actors and a playwright on the tenth anniversary of their flop. It first premiered at the U.K.'s National Theatre in 2015.

Next, Schmidt will helm the world premiere of her play All the Fine Boys. The show is set in a South Carolina suburb in the late ‘80s and follows fourteen-year-old best friends Jenny and Emily as they contemplate their sexual awakening. Performances will start in February 2017.

The season concludes with Linklater’s The Whirligig, featuring Girls star and off-Broadway alum Zosia Mamet and recent Golden Globe winner Maura Tierney. Elliott will direct the production, which begins previews in May 2017. Tierney will star as Kristina, who heads back to Berkshire County to care for her estranged daughter alongside her ex-husband. As word of her return travels, several familiar faces, including her childhood best friend Trish (Mamet), attempt to reconnect.

Performances of the four productions are set for the Pershing Square Signature Center. Additional casting and creative team members will be announced at a later date.

www.broadway.com/buzz/184885/sutton-foster-will-headline-sweet-charity-revival-for-new-group-full-off-broadway-season-announced/

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World Premiere - THE WHIRLIGIG
by Hamish Linklater
directed by Scott Elliott

May - June 2017

When, after much time away, Kristina (Maura Tierney) is back in Berkshire County, word spreads fast that she and her ex-husband are caring for their estranged, ailing daughter Julie. Broken-hearted and giddy with love and confusion, surprising visitors from Julie's complicated past, including her childhood best friend Trish (Zosia Mamet) and her former drug dealer, practically trip over each other to reach the young woman they thought they'd lost years before but still feel so deeply connected to. Heartfelt and compassionate, Hamish Linklater’s The Whirligig spins a tale of a fractured community weaving a circuitous route back to one another.

Performance Schedule:
May - June 2017
Theater Location:
The New Group at The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
Plan your visit!
www.thenewgroup.org/the-whirligig.html

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“Sweet Charity” in Trump Time: “There’s Gotta Be Something Better than This”!
BY PATRICK PACHECO | NOVEMBER 20, 2016

“Sweet Charity” in Trump Time: “There’s Gotta Be Something Better than This”!
Sutton Foster and Shuler Hensley in "Sweet Charity."
(Monique Carboni. wwww.thenewgroup.org)
Charity Valentine, the indomitable dance hall hostess is back, and in the parlance of classic movie ads, the New Group has got her. Now in its 20th year, the non-profit off-Broadway company, under the artistic direction of Scott Elliott, has long been known for its bold work, often exploring dystopian scenarios like the brutal societal dislocation in Philip Ridley’s “Mercury Fur,” which they presented last year.

But if the launch of its new season with the current revival of “Sweet Charity,” starring Sutton Foster in the title role, seems anomalous, Elliott points out in an interview that the company has previously developed three other musicals: “Avenue Q,” “The Kid,” and “Bunty Berman.”

Still, four musicals in two decades isn’t many, and the revival of the 1966 Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields-Neil Simon classic is undeniably an unusual choice for the New Group. And Elliott admits that the planets had to align just right for this one: seed money from commercial producer Kevin McCollum (“Avenue Q”); Foster’s eagerness to vivisect the character of Charity; and a director, Leigh Silverman, who could, in Elliott’s words, bring about “a ‘Sweet Charity’ unlike any ever before seen.”

What is driving this re-interpretation, he adds, are “two strong women” who have given the characters, including Charity’s gal pals at the Times Square Dance Hall, much more depth and empowerment. “These women are not acting as though every man is going to save their lives,” says Elliott. “Even songs like ‘There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This’ and ‘Hey, Big Spender’ have a contemporary resonance to them they haven’t had before. These women embrace their sexual powers.”

Taking a risky gamble, this production features new choreography by Joshua Bergasse (“On the Town”) in place of the Bob Fosse moves that animated the original production, which starred Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera. (Shirley MacLaine was Charity in the 1969 film version.) Unlike all previous productions, Elliott says this one drew inspiration from the musical’s original source material, the 1957 Italian film “Nights of Cabiria.” Director Federico Fellini trained a harsher spotlight on the dating woes of Giulietta Masina’s irrepressible prostitute.

“It’s a great movie, all of us loved it, so this ‘Charity’ is definitely darker,” says Elliott. “Every little change adds up to an emotional and moving end. I think they really nailed it this time.”

The rest of the New Group’s season is suffused in even darker hues with Wallace Shawn’s “Evening at the Talk House” offering a blistering and timely look at a group of theater friends who’ve gathered on the tenth anniversary of their last flop. In the murky nights outside the club, a government-led program enlists civilians to make targeted attacks on suspicious foreigners both antiseptically through drones and more immediately, in the field. When the black comedy played London, the Variety critic wrote that Shawn, who plays a veteran actor, “is up to his old tricks again: pricking the conscience of right-on, left-leaning theatergoers. No one does that better than this impish, idiosyncratic polymath, who, at 72, still comes across as precocious, probably because we resent him flagging our complacent complicity in all the world’s ills.”

Says Elliott, who will direct the production, “Wally’s plays are a bit like dreams, but this is one of his most accessible works. Politically, it’s quite current.” “Evening at the Talk House” begins performances in January.

Finishing out the New Group’s season will be Erica Schmidt’s “All the Fine Boys,” a coming-of-age tale of Emily and Jenny, who, at 14, explore sex and romance with, respectively, a high school senior and a church-going man in his twenties; and Hamish Linklater’s “The Whirligig,” starring Zosia Mamet and Maura Tierney, in which the imminent death of a heroin addict compels those around her — divorced parents, a drug dealer and a former lover — to examine their complicity in her fate.

“It’s all about guilt,” says Elliott. “It all about how we figure in the destruction of somebody. But Hamish has a gigantic heart and you can feel it in every beat of the story.”

www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/1716633/sweet-charity-in-trump-time-theres-gotta-be-something-better

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Hamish Linklater’s The Whirligig Finds Its Complete Cast
BY OLIVIA CLEMENT
FEB 28, 2017
See who’s joining Norbert Leo Butz, Zosia Mamet, and Golden Globe winner Maura Tierney in the world premiere Off-Broadway.

The New Group has announced complete casting for the world premiere of Hamish Linklater’s The Whirligig, set to begin previews May 2 Off-Broadway. Noah Bean, Jon DeVries, Alex Hurt, Jonny Orsini, and Grace Van Patten, will join the previously announced, Norbert Leo Butz, Zosia Mamet and Maura Tierney for the debut production at The Pershing Square Signature Center.

In Linklater’s The Whirligig, Butz and Tierney will play a couple caring for their estranged, ailing daughter in Berkshire County, to be played by Van Patten. “Broken-hearted and giddy with love and confusion, surprising visitors from Julie's complicated past practically trip over each other to reach the young woman they thought they'd lost years before but still feel so deeply connected to,” read production notes.

Directed by artistic director Scott Elliott, performances will be in The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre with an official opening night set for May 21.

This production will feature scenic design by Derek McLane, costume design by Clint Ramos, lighting design by Jeff Croiter, and sound design by ML Dogg. Production stage manager is Valerie A. Peterson. Casting is by Judy Henderson, CSA.

Tickets are available by visiting thenewgroup.org, calling Ticket Central at [phone], or in person at 416 West 42nd Street (noon-8 PM daily).

www.playbill.com/article/hamish-linklaters-the-whirligig-finds-its-complete-cast

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Dolly Wells Replaces Maura Tierney in Hamish Linklater's The Whirligig
The world premiere New Group production opens at the Pershing Square Signature Center this May.

Hayley Levitt • Off-Broadway • Mar 28, 2017

Dolly Wells joins the cast of Hamish Linklater's The Whirligig, making its world premiere with the New Group this spring.
(photo provided by the New Group)

The New Group announced today that Dolly Wells will replace Maura Tierney in the world premiere cast of Hamish Linklater's The Whirligig, beginning performances May 4 at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Tierney departs the role of Kristina because of a shooting schedule conflict.

Wells joins the previously announced Noah Bean (Patrick), Norbert Leo Butz (Michael), Jon DeVries (Mr. Biacco), Alex Hurt (Greg), Zosia Mamet (Trish), Jonny Orsini (Derrick), and Grace Van Patten (Julie). Wells is a U.K. writer and performer who starred in the six-part comedy Doll & Em (which she cocreated with Emily Mortimer for HBO) and Andrew Haigh's film, 45 Years, opposite Charlotte Rampling. She can also be seen on-screen in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Boundaries, as well as two seasons of the Starz series Blunt Talk.

Directed by Scott Elliott, The Whirligig is described as follows: "When, after much time away, Kristina is back in Berkshire County, word spreads fast that she and her ex-husband Michael are caring for their estranged, ailing daughter Julie. Brokenhearted and giddy with love and confusion, surprising visitors from Julie's complicated past practically trip over each other to reach the young woman they thought they'd lost years before but still feel so deeply connected to."

The creative team includes scenic design by Derek McLane, costume design by Clint Ramos, lighting design by Jeff Croiter, sound design by ML Dogg, original music by Duncan Sheik, and special effects design by Jeremy Chernick.

Performances will run from May 4-June 11 with an official May 21 opening.

www.theatermania.com/off-broadway/news/dolly-wells-replaces-maura-tierney-the-whirligig_80522.html