Altar Boyzplays its 1000th performance
The Off-Broadway musical Altar Boyz, winner of the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical Off-Broadway, will plays its 1000th performance on 22 Mar 2007.
With this milestone, Altar Boyz passes such other award winning musicals as The Will Rogers Follies (983), Sunset Blvd (977), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (964), Bells are Ringing (924), Kiss of the Spider Woman (906), The Who�s Tommy (900), and the original production of Chicago (898), among countless others.
The musical is currently booking to 2 Mar 2008 at New World Stages / Stage 4, where it opened on the 1 Mar 2005, following previews from the 15 Feb 2005.
Altar Boyz is a musical comedy about a struggling Christian boy-band riding the wave of America's latest fascination with religion. Armed with catchy melodies, freaky moves and product in their hair, the self-anointed apostles of pop (Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan . . . and Abraham (He's Jewish) bring their soul-saving tour to New York City, with their heavenly hits like �Girl, You Make Me Wanna Wait� and �Jesus Called Me On My Cell Phone�.
Altar Boyz features Landon Beard (Luke), Matthew Buckner (Matthew), Jay Garcia (Juan), Ryan J Ratliff (Mark) and Ryan Strand (Abraham).
Conceived by Marc Kessler and Ken Davenport, Altar Boyz has a score by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker with book by Kevin Del Aguila.
The musical is directed by Stafford Arima and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, with set designs by Anna Louizos, lighting design by Natasha Katz, and sound design by Peter Hylenski. Lynne Shankel is the music director and Co-Orchestrator.
The show received mostly good to luke-warm reviews from the popular press: "Sends you home with a smile" (New York Times); "keeps you laughing all evening long." (New Yoek Daily News); New York Theatre Guide reviewer Polly Wittenberg said "There is virtually no plot involved, and the procession of clever rock numbers may not bring peace but they sure provide 90 intermissionless minutes of fun."
Altar Boyz received the 2005 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical Off-Broadway and earned Christopher Gattelli the 2005 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreographer.
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