The Story of the Story

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has been a movie twice before.

The first version was the 1964 film Bedtime Story starring David Niven as Lawrence, Marlon Brando as Freddy, and Shirley Jones as the American soap queen they are both competing to seduce.

Decades later, a remake was supposedly envisioned as a vehicle for David Bowie and Mick Jagger (after their collaboration on the recording/video "Dancing in the Streets") but both dropped out, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was instead made in 1988 with Michael Caine as Lawrence, Steve Martin as Freddy and Glenne Headly as the soap queen.

The musical stage version premiered ion San Diego in the fall of 2004 and hit Broadway in January of 2005. It was nominated for 11 Tony Awards, but was up against Spamalot (with 14 nominations) that year. The show closed in September of 2006 after over 600 performances. The national equity tour launched in August of 2006 and lasted a year. This was followed by a non-equity tour that wrapped in March of 2008.

In other words, the main reason that this show is not as familiar or well-known as the standard FCOA offering is that it is one of the newest shows Civic has ever done.

Here We Go

Those of you who know me know that I am not known for my bubbly enthusiasm and bouncy excitement. And I am occasionally accused of a certain amount of dry irony.

So I'm telling you to believe me when I tell you that I am excited about doing this show. I read the script, listened to the score, and started lobbying for the job.

In the weeks ahead I'll post more about the show's background, the characters, the music, and all the reasons that I am really, really looking forward to bringing this show to the Barrow stage. Stay tuned...