David Hyde Pierce won a Tony for starring in a musical, picking up the award in 1997 for Curtains. Now he’s stepping off the stage and for the first time directing a musical on Broadway as THR reports he’ll be the creative force behind It Shoulda Been You when it opens in the spring. We’ll have to wait an see whether Tony starts knocking this time around.
He’s already lined up a great cast, including NPH’s husband, David Burtka, who’ll star alongside Sierra Boggess as a bride and groom who get caught in the middle of a culture clash collision when their overbearing mothers, played by Tyne Daly and Harriet Harris, try to deal with a wedding where the bride is Jewish and the groom a Catholic. Other roles will be filled by Edward Hibbert, Lisa Howard and Steve Rosen.
The show was a great success at the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey in 2011 (despite somewhat mixed reviews), and is now moving to Broadway’s Brooks Atkinson Theatre, with an April 14th opening night set.
It’s perhaps not too surprising Pierce got the job, as his husband Brian Hargrove, wrote the book and lyrics for the show (Hargrove has previously written for TV shows such as Titus and Caroline in the City), while Barbara Anselmi came up with the score.
Burtka will presumably head for rehearsals after he’s completed his recently announced role opposite Neil Patrick Harris in American Horror Story: Freak Show. The duo have been rumoured for the show for quite a while. It’s believed they were initially offered larger roles that they couldn’t fit into their schedule (and had also previously been in talks to play a gay couple in the first season of the show) but TVLine says they’ll now show up towards the end of the latest season. NPH will be in the ‘final two episodes as a chameleon salesman, while Burtka will turn up in the season finale in what I’m told is a sexy storyline with Jessica Lange’s batty chanteuse.’ With Matt Bomer also showing up in one of the episode, Freak Show is certainly shaping up to be something special.
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