Full LENNON Cast Announced

Complete casting was announced today for the upcoming Broadway production of LENNON, the world premiere musical based on the life and songs of John Lennon. The cast includes Will Chase, Chuck Cooper, Julie Danao, Mandy Gonzalez, Marcy Harriell, Chad Kimball, Terrence Mann, Julia Murney, and Michael Potts.

To check out photos of the cast and find out more information, visit the show's website at www.LennonTheMusical.com.

Written and directed by Don Scardino and produced by Allan McKeown, Don Scardino and Edgar Lansbury in association with Clear Channel Entertainment, LENNON will make its Broadway debut at the Broadhurst Theatre (235 West 44th Street) beginning previews on Thursday, July 7th with the opening date set for Thursday, July 21st.

LENNON is produced by arrangement with Yoko Ono.

Prior to Broadway, LENNON will play an engagement at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco, California from April 12th - May 14th and then at the Colonial Theater in Boston, Massachusetts from May 31st - June 25th.

Director and book writer Don Scardino says, "We will tell the story of John Lennon's life using Lennon's own words and twenty-seven of his songs. Our ensemble of 9 extraordinary and diverse performers and a ten-piece onstage band will guide the audience through Lennon's life and the eras he shaped." Scardino continues, "Out of the nearly two hundred songs to choose from, the musical includes such memorable tunes as "Imagine," "Instant Karma," "Give Peace a Chance," "(Just Like) Starting Over" and "Whatever Gets You Through the Night," among others. Using slide and film projections, LENNON will be a visually stunning search for the real John Lennon."

In addition to Scardino, the LENNON creative team includes Joe Malone (Choreography) John Arnone (Scenic Design), Jane Greenwood (Costume Design), Natasha Katz (Lighting Design), and Bobby Aitken (Sound Design).

Playing schedule and ticket information for San Francisco, Boston, and Broadway will be announced soon.

THE COMPANY:

Will Chase - Broadway: The Full Monty (Jerry), Aida, Miss Saigon (Chris), Rent. Chicago theatre credits: ...Black Patent Leather Shoes... (Jeff Award nomination, Best Actor), Assassins, Electra, Trask & Fenn (Jeff nom.), Son of Fire (Jeff nom.), Mame. Film and television: Shaft , the upcoming HBO film Brooklyn, "Law & Order," "Third Watch," "Queens Supreme," "When I Grow Up," "All My Children," "Guiding Light." A classically trained conductor and percussionist, Will has worked with such classical music luminaries as John Cage, Robert Spano, John Adams, Gunther Schuller and Loren Maazel. Will is married to comedienne Lori Chase, and they are the proud parents of Daisy and Gracie.

Chuck Cooper - won the 1996 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his portrayal of Memphis in The Life. Broadway: Caroline, or Change, Chicago, Passion, Someone to Watch Over Me, Rumors, Amen Corner, Getting Away With Murder, Badfoot in St. Louis Woman (City Center Encores!). National tours: The Tap Dance Kid, Eubie, Whistle Down the Wind. Off-Broadway: Marco Polo Sings a Solo, Jawbone, Avenue X, Police Boys, Colored People's Time. Television: "Law & Order," "Oz," "Strangers with Candy," "NYPD Blue," "Cosby," "The Cosby Mysteries," "New York Undercover," "I'll Fly Away," "The Bold and the Beautiful," "100 Centre Street." Film: Three Days of Rain, Our Song, Gloria, The Peacemaker, The Juror, The Hurricane. Favorite role: Eddie, Alex and Lilli's father.

Julie Danao - National Tours include: Rent, Aida, Miss Saigon. Off-Broadway credits include: The Karaoke Show. Other credits include: Disney's Aladdin's Oasis and Pocahontas stage shows. Television credits include: "The Making of Aladdin." Independent and short film credits include: 101 Ways..., Three Penny America, Reading Lessons.

Mandy Gonzalez - A Los Angeles native, Mandy was most recently seen on Broadway starring as Sarah along-side Michael Crawford in Dance of the Vampires. Mandy is perhaps best known for her Obie Award-winning performance in the Off-Broadway production of Eli's Comin'. She has also performed as a backup singer for the Divine Bette Midler on a tour of the U.S. and Canada. Workshops include When You Wish, Wicked and Drive All Night. For more info visit www.mandygonzalez.net.

Marcy Harriell - Recent credits: Company (The Kennedy Center), Rent (Broadway first replacement), The Compleat Female Stage Beauty (Philadelphia Theatre Co.), HMS Pinafore (Berkshire Theatre Festival), Once on This Island (Rep. Theatre of St. Louis), A Sondheim Celebration (Lincoln Center), national tours of West Side Story and Blood Brothers, and a host of workshops including Hotel Carter (New Dramatists), Was (Lincoln Center), Mask and The Capeman.

Chad Kimball - most recently donned the endearing and peculiar guise of Milky White the Cow in the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's and James Lapine's Into the Woods. He made his Broadway debut in the final performance of Frank Wildhorn's Civil War (Broadway and national tour). Credits include the 30th anniversary Off-Broadway revival of Godspell, Sweeney Todd at Signature Theatre and Chess at the Helen Hayes in Nyack. Other favorites include Master Harold and the Boys, Equus, The Winter's Tale and Three Sisters. Chad made his solo concert debut in September for the Broadway Spotlight Series. He is a graduate of The Boston Conservatory and a native of Seattle.

Terrence Mann - Broadway: Rocky Horror, Barnum (Ringmaster), Cats (Rum Tum Tugger), Rags (Saul), Les Misérables (Javert - Tony nomination - Best Actor), Jerome Robbins' Broadway (Narrator), A Christmas Carol (Scrooge), Beauty and the Beast (Beast - Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Award nominations - Best Actor in a Musical), The Scarlet Pimpernel (Chauvelin), Getting Away with Murder (Greg). Off-Broadway and regional: Assassins (Playwrights Horizons), 1776 (Dickinson), Noël Coward's Tonight at 8:30 (Williamstown Theatre Festival). Film and television: A Chorus Line, Big Top Pee Wee, Critters, "One Life to Live," "Another World" (Emmy nomination), "All My Children," "True Women," "Law & Order."

Julia Murney - Manhattan Theatre Club: Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party (Queenie, Drama Desk nomination), A Class Act (Felicia), both original cast albums available on RCA Victor, Time and Again (Kate). A Syracuse University graduate, other credits include Cloud 9 (Perry Street), Mata Hari (York), Into the Woods (Pioneer), Snapshots (Virginia State). TV: "Law & Order," "Another World," and approximately a gazillion voiceovers.

Michael Potts - Theater: The Persians, Highway Ulysses, Twelfth Night. Encores!: Golden Boy, Once Around the City, Romeo & Juliet, Love's Labour's Lost, The Hostage, Cup of Coffee, Arms and the Man, Joe Fearless, Mud River Stone, Overtime, Rent, The America Play (Obie Award); The Rivals, Randy Newman's Faust, Othello, St. Joan of the Stockyards. Film/Television: Black People Hate Me and They Hate My Glasses, Conspiracy Theory, The Peacemaker, George: A True Story, Stonewall, Hackers, "The Wire," "Queens Supreme," "Oz," "Cosby," "Trinity," "Law & Order," "NYPD Blue," "Thomas Jefferson," "The West." Graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

CREATIVE TEAM:

Don Scardino (Producer, Director, and Book Writer) Mr. Scardino's directing career spans television, film and theater and includes such credits as A Few Good Men (Broadway and National Tour), as well as four seasons as the Artistic Director at Playwrights Horizons where he produced over two dozen new American plays. Other theatre credits include Kathy and Mo, Later Life, the long running revival of Godspell among many others. On television, he has directed numerous episodes of "Ed," "The West Wing," "Sports Night," "The Education of Max Bickford" (also as Executive Producer) with Richard Dreyfuss, "Cosby," "Law & Order," "Tracey Takes On," "Homicide," "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd" and many more. His film, "Advice From a Caterpillar" won the award for Best Picture at the Aspen Comedy Festival in 2000 and the film "Me and Veronica" was selected for competition in the Venice and London Film Festivals.

Joe Malone (Choreography) In the past 25 years, Joe has sung and danced in over 100 television specials, films, nightclub acts and videos, and has worked as an actor and choreographer on the Emmy Award-winning "The Tracey Ullman Show" and "Tracey Takes On..." (Emmy nom.). Awards include The Lehman Award, The National Academy of Dance Award, The Min-on Award and The SGI Culture Award. In 1992, with his wife Nanci Hammond and Louise Mandel, he established "The Performing Arts Center" a school concentrating on the training of young artists with a dream of a career in the performing arts. In 1994, he established "Mandalone Project", a company devoted to the ongoing development of music and dance related projects geared for the concert theater.

John Arnone (Scenic Design) His designs for Broadway include Fortune's Fool and The Full Monty (also London), The Who's Tommy (Tony Award); How to SucceedŠ; Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992; Sacrilege; The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public; Sex and Longing directed by Garland Wright; The Deep Blue Sea; Patio/Porch; Lone Star/Pvt. Wars; Marlene; Minnelli on Minnelli; Gore Vidal's The Best Man; Arthur Miller's Ride Down Mt. Morgan. He has received two Obies for sustained achievement in set design and the L.A. Theater Critics, Dora Mavor Moore, Outer Critics Circle, American Theater Wing, Drama Desk, Olivier (nom.) and Tony Awards. His work has been seen in London, Vienna, Frankfurt, Berlin and Prague. He designed the recent productions of Mr. Albee's The Play About the Baby and Tiny Alice.

Jane Greenwood (Costume Design) Broadway: more than 70 shows, including The Caretaker, The Retreat From Moscow, "MASTER HAROLD"...and the boys, Salome: The Reading, Tartuffe, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Oldest Living Confederate Widow, Fortune's Fool, Morning's at Seven, Major Barbara, The Dinner Party, James Joyce's The Dead, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, An American Daughter, Master Class, The Heiress, Passion, The Sisters Rosensweig, Plenty, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. Off-Broadway: Burn This; Vita and Virginia; Sylvia; The Lisbon Traviata; Lips Together, Teeth Apart. Dance: Martha Clarke's The Garden of Earthly Delights. Metropolitan Opera: The Great Gatsby (world premiere). Chicago Lyric Opera: Nabucco. Film: Arthur, The Four Seasons, Glengarry Glen Ross. Awards: numerous, including 12 Tony nominations. Yale School of Drama faculty.

Natasha Katz (Lighting Design). Recent Broadway: Taboo, Aida (Tony Award 2000), Beauty and the Beast, Sweet Smell of Success, Twelfth Night, Flower Drum Song, Dance of Death, The Capeman and Barrymore. Opera/Dance: Carnival of the Animals (NYC Ballet), Tryst (Royal Ballet), Don Quixote (American Ballet Theatre) and Die Soldatan (NYC Opera). Concert acts: Shirley MacLaine, Ann-Margret and Tommy Tune. Permanent lighting installations: Niketown NYC and London and the Big Bang at the Museum of Natural History in NYC.

Bobby Aitken (Sound Design) has been involved with theatre sound for more than 20 years, designing sound for productions in the UK and around the world. London work includes Cyberjam, We Will Rock You, Blast!, Grease, Return to the Forbidden Planet, Five Guys Named Moe, Which Witch, Metropolis, Pete Townsend's The Iron Man, In the Midnight Hour, High Society, Time, A Saint She Ain't, The Best of Times, Soultrain, From a Jack to a King, Sweeney Todd, Bitter Sweet, Children of Eden, The Fix and Mamma Mia! UK regional work includes productions at Coventry Belgrade, Derby Playhouse, Sheffield Crucible, Manchester Royal Exchange, Watford Palace and Leicester Haymarket. RSC: The Beggar's Opera and Bartholomew Fair. Opera: for the past four years Bobby has been working to create techniques to deliver credible sound reinforcement for large scale, in-the-round opera production. Work has included Carmen, Madame Butterfly, Tosca, Aida and La Bohème at the Royal Albert Hall.

PRODUCERS:

Allan McKeown (Producer) is a prolific producer of TV, Feature Films and Theater, both in the UK and the US. He has been Executive Producer of many of Britain's best-loved comedy and drama series. In the US he has been awarded multiple Emmys for having created with his wife Tracey Ullman her HBO series Tracey Takes On. While under contract with Paramount and later 20th Century Fox he produced for all the major networks, HBO and A&E. During his career, Allan McKeown has founded several businesses, including the launch of the UK's first ever publicly quoted independent production company, SelecTV and was an original member of the Meridian consortium, which was awarded the commercial TV franchise for the South and South East of England. On the stage his credits include The Last Night of the Poms at the Royal Albert Hall with Barry Humphries. Anyone for Dennis (London's West End), The Big Love on Broadway, and more recently Jerry Springer The Opera, (Olivier Award, best Musical 2004) producing and financing the show through its development on the fringe, at the National Theater and now running at the Cambridge Theater in London. Upcoming, "Tracey's Best Bits" at the Henry Fonda Theater (LA) this February which will air on HBO the summer of 2005, prior to making its way to Broadway in the fall of 2005.

Edgar Lansbury (Producer) Mr. Lansbury began his career in the theater as a designer of Off-Broadway shows and subsequently became an Art Director on CBS' "Playhouse 90," "Studio One" and "Climax!" Mr. Lansbury has produced a score of Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, including The Subject was Roses (winner of the Critics' Circle Award, the Antoinette Perry Award, and the Pulitzer Prize), Broadway Follies, The Magic Show, the London and New York productions of Gypsy starring Angela Lansbury, international productions of Godspell, The Night That Made America Famous, Elizabeth I, First One Asleep Whistle, The Only Game in Town, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, Promenade, That Summer - That Fall, Look to the Lilies, and American Buffalo. Recently he co-produced an adaptation of Willa Cather's O, Pioneer! at the Huntington Theater in Boston, the Rap musical Club XII, Amphigorey - The Musical, Frank Gilroy's Any Given Day, In Circles, Curtains by Stephen Bill which won two Obie Awards, the award-winning Advice From a Caterpillar, Grace and Glorie, with Estelle Parsons and Lucie Arnaz, June Moon, and the off-Broadway smash hit As Bees in Honey Drown. On film Mr. Lansbury produced "Godspell" for Columbia Pictures, and "The Subject Was Roses" for MGM. Other films include Merchant-Ivory's "The Wild Party," "Squirm," "Blue Sunshine," "He Knows You're Alone," and "The Clairvoyant," as well as Movies of the Week "Summer Girl," and "A Stranger Waits" for CBS Television. Mr. Lansbury recently completed the romantic comedy "Advice From a Caterpillar" and executive produced "Gypsy '83."'

Clear Channel Entertainment (Producer) a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, is a leading producer and marketer of live entertainment events and currently owns, operates and/or exclusively books 130 live entertainment venues in North America & Europe. Recent Broadway producing credits include The Producers, Caroline, or Change, Dracula, Fiddler on the Roof, Wonderful Town, Hairsprayand Movin' Out. Current touring productions include The Producers, Hairspray and Movin' Out. In addition, Clear Channel Entertainment presents theatrical subscription seasons and individual presentations in over 50 markets across North America. More information may be found by visiting www.broadwayacrossamerica.com and www.clearchannel.com.

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