The Nance announces complete cast
Jenni Barber (The Performers), Andrèa Burns (In the Heights) and Tony Award-winner Cady Huffman (The Producers) will join the previously announced Nathan Lane, Jonny Orsini and Lewis J. Stadlen in in the Lincoln Center Theater's production of Douglas Carter Beane's new play The Nance, directed by Jack O'Brien, opening at the Lyceum Theatre on 15 Apr 2013, following previews from 21 Mar 2013.
A nance, according to Webster's Dictionary, is "an effeminate or homosexual man." In the world of 1930's burlesque, a nance was a wildly popular character, a stereotypically camp homosexual man, most times played by a straight performer.
In The Nance, playwright Douglas Carter Beane tells the story of 'Chauncey Miles' (to be played by Nathan Lane), a headline nance performer in New York burlesque, who also happens to be a homosexual. Integrating burlesque sketches into his drama, Beane paints, with humor and pathos, the portrait of a homosexual man, living and working in the secretive and dangerous gay world of 1930's New York, whose outrageous antics on the burlesque stage stand in marked contrast to his messy offstage life.
The Nance will have sets by John Lee Beatty, costumes by Ann Roth, lighting by Japhy Weideman and sound by Leon Rothenberg.
Jenni BarberAndrèa BurnsCady HuffmanOriginally published on