The Threepenny Opera: Jim Dale to play Mr. Peachum

The Roundabout Theatre Company have announced that Jim Dale (Mr. Peachum) will join Alan Cumming (Macheath), Edie Falco (Jenny) and Nellie McKay as (Polly) in a new Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill�s The Threepenny Opera, directed by Scott Elliott on Broadway at Studio 54.

Roundabout Theatre Company has commissioned Wallace Shawn to translate and adapt the original German book and lyrics for the production. The Threepenny Opera will open on the 20 Apr 2006 following previews from the 24 Mar. This is a limited engagement through 11 Jun 2006. Tony award winner Jim Dale will return to Broadway after nine years, having last received a Best Actor Tony� nomination for Candide in 1997. Jim Dale last appeared at the Roundabout Theatre Company in 1985 as �Bri� in Peter Nichol�s A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.

Additional cast members will be announced shortly.

The design team for The Threepenny Opera includes Derek McLane (sets), Isaac Mizrahi (costumes) and Jason Lyons (lights). Kevin Stites is the music director.

The Threepenny Opera serves up a dark satire of �respectable� society, with dashing thieves, saucy prostitutes, and lingering melodies. Based on Elizabeth Hauptmann�s German translation of John Gay�s eighteenth-century The Beggar�s Opera , The Threepenny Opera thrusts the audience into the seedy underworld of Mack the Knife, a dapper criminal and his wry love affair with Polly Peachum.

Scott Elliott is an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company. For the Roundabout Theatre Company, he has directed Chekhov�s Three Sisters and Clare Boothe Luce�s The Women.

Alan Cumming returns to Roundabout Theatre Company where he most famously made his Broadway debut and won a 1998 Tony Award for his role as the �Emcee� in Kander & Ebb�s Cabaret. In 2001, he played �Otto� in Joe Mantello�s production of No�l Coward�s Design For Living.

The Threepenny Opera premiered on Broadway at the Empire Theatre on April 13, 1933. The last Broadway revival began at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 5th, 1989.

The Threepenny Opera will be the fifth musical at Studio 54 since Roundabout Theatre Company purchased the venue that will serve as their new home for musical theatre productions and special theatrical events. The past tenants include Pacific Overtures, the Tony award-winning production of Assassins and the Tony award-winning production of Cabaret which had its final performance on the 4 Jan 2004, after a six year run.