Tinseltown Tiptoe, a new musical comedy set in 1952 Hollywood, gets one workshop presentation in New York City on Thursday, January 7, 2027, directed by Michael Mayer. It is invitation only.
Producer Christine Russell made the announcement on October 6. No venue has been named, and with the showing closed to the public there are no tickets to buy.
The book is by Kate Moira Ryan and Nicholas Coster, and Heather Reid wrote the music and lyrics. Steve Sidwell handles orchestrations, Joshua Zecher-Ross is music director, and Bespoke Theatricals is general manager.
The plot turns on studio-era cover-ups. Cliff Stone is a rising leading man hiding his relationship with Mark, a blacklisted writer. To keep a vengeful gossip columnist off the scent, the studio arranges his marriage to Dora Gentry, a star whose career has stalled.
The sham puts Dora back in demand and gives her assistant, May, a route into screenwriting, but it pushes Cliff and Mark close to breaking point. When the scandal finally lands, their best hope may be a secret buried in the columnist’s own past.
Mayer won a Tony for Spring Awakening. His other Broadway credits include Hedwig and the Angry Inch, American Idiot, Thoroughly Modern Millie and the recent Funny Girl revival, and his Little Shop of Horrors is in its sixth year Off-Broadway. At the Metropolitan Opera he has directed Rigoletto, Marnie, La Traviata, Grounded and Aida.
Reid co-founded The Murmurs, a band signed to MCA Records, and her songwriting runs from Shakira’s Don’t Bother to the musical theater storyline of Freeform’s Good Trouble. Her earlier musicals are E de K and Dear Bernard. Ryan’s plays include The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, written with Linda S. Chapman, and she has won two GLAAD Awards.
Sidwell is a Grammy winner with Tony, Olivier and Emmy nominations, and his stage credits include Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Bat Out of Hell and Operation Mincemeat. Russell was an executive producer of Beautiful and lead producer of the Go-Go’s musical Head Over Heels on Broadway.
More on the show is at TinseltownTiptoe.com.
