April 28, 2023 – The darkness of film noir meets the colorful glamour of Hollywood in “City of Angels,” Theatre Santa Fe’s summer musical comedy at 7:30 p.m. Fridays, May 19 and May 26, and 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, May 20 and May 27, 2023, in the Jackson N. Sasser Fine Arts Hall at the Northwest Campus of Santa Fe College (SF), 3000 NW 83 Street, Gainesville.
Tickets are $15 for adults; $9 for seniors, students, military service members and children 12 and under; and free for SF students, faculty and staff with college ID cards. Tickets are available from the Fine Arts Hall box office at 352-395-4181 or online from Showpass at showpass.com/city-of-angels.
Set in Hollywood in the late 1940s, the Tony Award-winning “City of Angels” features parallel storylines and two characters who mirror each other. The Hollywood element involves Stine, a novelist who is working on a screenplay about Stone, a hard-nosed private eye operating in a film noir Los Angeles. Simultaneously, a Tinseltown movie producer is tempting Stine with the glamour and glitz of the movie industry.
The production takes place on different parts of the stage with changes in costumes and lighting that correspond to the two parts of the story. Costumes and lighting for Stone’s detective story are muted and gray. When the story switches to the Hollywood interactions between Stine and the producer, the costumes and lighting become brighter and more colorful.
“This is the first book musical we’ve done since the COVID pandemic, and I want the audience to laugh, relax, have fun and love the songs,” said Theatre Professor and “City of Angels” Director Russell Schultz. “We have about 20 students in the cast, some playing multiple roles, and 30 to 35 students involved in the whole production. This musical has bigger-than-life characters that you will care about and songs that express their inner thoughts.”
Schultz explained that the students are meeting several challenges posed by the production. In addition to actors having to play multiple roles, SF’s technical theatre students are building sets and creating lighting designs that separate the play’s two storylines.
The play was written by Larry Gelbart, who wrote the screenplay for “Tootsie,” co-wrote “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and was a writer on “M*A*S*H” for many years. The music is by Cy Coleman with lyrics by David Zippel. In 1990, “City of Angels” won Tony Awards that included Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score.
“City of Angels” is organized and sponsored by the Santa Fe College Fine and Performing Arts and Entertainment Technology Department.
For more information, call Schultz at 352-395-5120. For more information about tickets, call the SF Box Office at 352-395-4181.