Photo Coverage: Guild Hall and Playwrights Theatre Present 'If It Was Easy' 2008/07/29

Photo Coverage: Guild Hall and Playwrights Theatre Present 'If It Was Easy'

Tuesday, July 29, 2008; Posted: 03:07 PM - by BWW

If It Was Easy… was presented by Guild Hall ( Josh Gladstone, Artistic Director) in Association with The Playwrights Theatre of East Hampton as a staged reading on Saturday July 26th at 8:00PM . The production was directed by David Brandenburg, co-founder and Artistic Director of The Hamptons Shakespeare Festival. The Playwrights Theatre of East Hampton was founded by Mitzi Pazer in 1981.

If It Was Easy… was nominated for the Best New Play Award by The American Theatre Critics Association. It had a successful run off-broadway at the Douglas Fairbanks Theater as well as regional productions around the country.

Never was the theatre ruled more by collaboration than during Broadway's Golden Age, when dynamic duos such as Kaufman and Hart, Rogers and Hammerstein, and Lindsay and Crouse fuelled the footlights. Now Guild Hall in association with The Playwrights Theatre of East Hampton will present another deadly duo, four time Tony winner Stewart F. Lane, co-owner of Broadway's legendary Place Theater and famed columnist Ward Morehouse III. Lane and Morehouse III have teamed up to write a comedy in the spirit of The Front Page and On the Twentieth Century.

The premise of their play If It Was Easy… is legendary producer Steve Gallop, suddenly down on his luck, is seduced by the charms of beautiful showbiz columnist Randi Lester, show's betting she can improve Gallop's Broadway track record with a musical based on Frank Sinatra. The idea attracts front page attention around the world; hundreds of Sinatra wannabes swamp Gallop's offices. Investors plead for a piece of the action. Not among the pleading masses is the mobster Joey Fingers whose "family" knew Frank, and who naturally expects to bankroll the entire show. On opening night it looks like curtains for the whole cast until Joey gets and offer he can't refuse.

Stewart F. Lane is a four time Tony Award winner as producer for La Cage Aux Folles, The Will Rogers Follies, Thoroughly Modern Mille and Jay Johnson: The Two and Only. He is currently represented on Broadway by Legally Blonde: The Musical and Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. This fall he will produce Godspell and American Buffalo on Broadway and Stormy Weather with The Passenda Playhouse. For more on Mr. Lane see www.mrbroadway.com

Ward Morehouse III is columnist, Playwright, TV host and sometimes theatre critic. He was the columnist for "Broadway After Dark" for The New York Sun, The New York Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Epoch Times and Timesquare.com. For more on Mr Morehouse III see www.wardmorehouse.com

The cast included: Howard Ross, LeeAnne Hutchinson, Lucy Boyle, Anthony Giaimo, Khris Lewin, Jeffrey Sutton, Josh Gladstone.

For more information on Guild Hall: www.guildhall.org
For more information on The Playwrights Theatre of East Hampton: www.pazer.org/theatre