Kristin Chenowith,Peter Gallagher and Cast Signed On The 20th Century Playbill

Description

The musical “On the 20th Century” brings Kristin Chenoweth and Peter Gallagher back to Broadway, where they can demonstrate the subtleties of being larger than life. These fine performers have been largely confined to television screens in recent years. And they grab the chance to chew (and devour) some real live scenery — and in Ms. Chenoweth’s case, hit pretty much every note on the scale, musical and otherwise — with the ecstatic vengeance of genies let out of their bottles. Such exquisite frenzy is required for the portrayal of Oscar Jaffee (Mr. Gallagher), a megalomaniacal theater impresario, and his former protégée Lily Garland (Ms. Chenoweth), who walked out on her mentor (and lover) to become a gold-lamé movie goddess. It’s the sense of narcissism as a biting, kicking, scratching kinetic force that makes Howard Hawks’s 1934 film “Twentieth Century” — based on the plays by Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur and Charles Bruce Millholland that inspired this musical, and starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard — such an enduring adrenaline rush. The same propulsive energy infuses this revival, which also hilariously features Andy Karl as a young Hollywood he-man in Lily’s thrall, and Mary Louise Wilson as a crazy old lady with a checkbook. The show’s title refers not to an era but to the great American supertrain of the 1930s, on which Lily and Oscar meet again after a long estrangement. (David Rockwell is the Deco deluxe designer of the onstage train set, with mouthwatering costumes to match by William Ivey Long.). This production was staged by the Roundabout Theater Company at the American Airlines Theater from February 12, 2015 up to July 19, 2015. This playbill was signed by Kristin Chenowith, Peter Gallagher and three cast members.