Santa Monica Playhouse presents Dolls! - Not Your Usual Love Story
Santa Monica Playhouse announced today that Actors' Repertory Theatre will kick off Part II of its 50th Anniversary Festival of Theatre with the world premiere musical comedy "DOLLS! - Not Your Usual Love Story," a cheerfully mysterious, unexpectedly amorous musical unveiling of the remarkable secret life of the dolls we left behind. The feel good musical previews Saturday, July 23, opens August 6 and plays weekends through September 25, 2011.
In its signature Commedia-circus theatre style, renowned Actors' Repertory Theatre (ART) brings to bold, beautiful life a delightful world premiere musical comedy as your favorite dolls of olde (sic) - the handsome Tin Soldier, the ephemeral Music Box Dancer, the ever-smiling Raggedy Girl, the cracked (literally and figuratively) Porcelain Victoriana, the anatomically incorrect Fashion Doll and more - burst onto the Santa Monica Playhouse stage, baring their souls, and their startling private lives, for all to see. ("The Playhouse is truly a gem in this city, and visiting it should be on the top-of everyone's Los Angeles to-do list." Daily Bruin.)
Written and directed by the internationally acclaimed creative team of Evelyn Rudie and Chris DeCarlo ("Your work is brilliant!" English Shakespeare Company), with words & music by E. Rudie and Matthew Wrather and musical direction by Playhouse Associate Director Serena Dolinsky, the cast of nine triple-threat performers features ART members Dolinsky and Melissa Gentry (Love in Bloom, Backstreet, Moonlight Madness), joined by guest artists Jessica Erin Bennett (Pygmalion, A Charlie Brown Christmas, all the female roles in the animated pilot Jake Hammered), Annie Mackay (Girls Behaving Badly, the cult classic The Butcher, The Group Repertory Theatre); Nancy Dobbs Owen* (Phantom of the Opera national tour; Sweeney Todd; Assassins, M. Butterfly, choreographer), Garett Stevens (Guiding Light, As the World Turns, Blood Night), and Troy Titus-Adams** (Numb3rs; The Bill; Lord of Illusions, directed by Clive Barker), with Evelyn Rudie* as Baby Babette and Chris DeCarlo* as Gigoletto, the love-struck, no-strings-attached marionette. Costume and design concept by award-winning designer Ashley Hayes. Production Stage Manager George J. Vennes III.