Huzzah!, a new musical about the world of Renaissance Faires written by husband-and-wife duo Laurence O鈥橩eefe and Nell Benjamin, had a reading at Williamstown Theatre Festival in August starring Disaster! Tony nominee Jennifer Simard.
鈥淗opefully more cool things will come of that,鈥� O鈥橩eefe told 半岛体育.com by phone. 鈥淲e鈥檙e going to hopefully do some big readings before Christmas, so I don鈥檛 want to give away too much! I want to be tantalizing if that鈥檚 okay.鈥�
The cast also included Tony Award winner Michael Rupert (Sweet Charity, Falsettos), Herndon Lackey (Parade, Les Mis茅rables) and P.J. Griffith (American Idiot, Giant), among others.
鈥淩en Faires have been around for 50-plus years, and they are an amazingly American phenomenon where, in celebrating the past, you invent amazing new things,鈥� said O鈥橩eefe. 鈥淎lmost all of our counter-cultural influences have come out of Ren Faires鈥攅verything from world music to international foods to weird hippie modes of dress鈥�
鈥淣ell and I have loved Ren Faires for decades, and it just turns out that it鈥檚 like the best of America. 鈥� So our story is about a family-owned mom-and-pop-type operation that is threatened mostly by its own family dysfunction. And, as we worked on this show for the last year or two, everyone we encountered said, 鈥極h my God, this is about the upcoming presidential election!鈥� We said, 鈥業 beg your pardon? Okay, we鈥檒l take it.鈥� But鈥opefully we have something pretty timeless because the weird, alternate ways of thinking and living that you see at Renaissance Faires are so wonderfully peculiar. They should be protected, and we鈥檙e writing a show about how you do that in today鈥檚 world.鈥�
O鈥橩eefe added that 鈥渋t went phenomenally well鈥� and that there is 鈥渕ore to come.鈥�
