"The Seduction of Sheila Valentine"...comments from writers

[PB ENT.]

Posted: 7/19/06 at 11:08am

Here is a bit of a heads up from Vincent Marini, Producing Artistic Director at Lenape PAC about a new musical reading to debut in Marlton, NJ:

"For the past eight months, Jack and Murphy I have been working on two shows concurrently. The first was The Day Before , which was conceived as a small five-person musical theater piece that could play in virtually any theater in the country. The second project, which we kept very quiet, was a new comedy written specifically for the Broadway stage called The Seduction of Sheila Valentine. The piece was being written, in part, as a star vehicle for none other than Broadway, recording, and concert star Linda Eder. Linda committed to the project about six months ago after reading the twenty-page treatment that I put together, but Jack and I did not want to release any additional information regarding the show until we had a reasonable portion of the script and score complete. (You never know if a great treatment will become a great script!)

Last month we spent the day in a recording studio doing four demo recordings of the show with Linda Eder, along with this year's Tony Award winner for Best Featured Actress, Beth Leavel (The Drowsy Chaperone), and the star of The Producers, Brad Oscar. The demos got us so excited about the show that we decided to see if Linda would consider doing an informal reading of Act I of the show. When she agreed, Jack and I decided that we would push back The Day Before workshop until later in the year and give the Lenape audience an opportunity to see the beginnings of what we believe will be a future Broadway show with a bona-fide Broadway star.

The Seduction of Sheila Valentine, set in the late 1950s, is about two forty-something, once-famous actresses who find themselves too old to play the young romantic leads anymore, and too vain to play anyone else. They are reduced to working in Dubuque, Iowa at the John Wayne DinnerTtheater, performing in a sad rip-off of Oklahoma called My Oh My Oh Iowa. Just when it seems things could not possible get any worse, their long-lost agent drops in on them on his way to deliver a script to his newest young star. The script he is carrying bears the title, The Seduction of Sheila Valentine. It was penned by a hot young writer/director who is all the rage in the New York theater scene. Through a series of machinations the two women get their hands on the script and they both conclude, independently of course, that the role of Sheila Valentine is their ticket back to the "Big-Time." One Role of a Lifetime + Two Desperate Actresses = Big Trouble!

It is an irreverent comedy that is completely original yet seems to channel some of the great musical comedies of the twentieth century. It is The Producers meets Mame, meets Guys and Dolls. You'll fall in love with the characters and, with any luck, find yourself laughing from the opening scene to the final curtain. "

Updated On: 7/19/06 at 11:08 AM