By the sounds coming from Craig Hall’s Coger Theatre, something big is coming. About 80 theatre and dance students are gearing up to debut the Tony Award-winning musical (1990), “City of Angels,” and it is no small feat.
Transporting MSU back to the 1940s
Set in Hollywood in the 1940s, “City of Angels” weaves together two plot lines: the “real” world of Stine, a young crime novelist, with the “reel” world of P.I. Stone, his hard-boiled, fictional hero. The play will take place in more than 20 locations, spanning across two sets—one in 1940s Hollywood and the other a black-and-white film noir fiction. Chris Herr, theatre and dance’s interim department head, said this presents a great learning opportunity for students.
“It’s a design challenge and a huge challenge for our students and staff to build on budget,” he said. “It’s a strong, funny script, with a great jazz-influenced score and some truly challenging roles for student actor/singers, many of whom play different roles in each of the worlds created in the play.
The play will bring together students and faculty from the departments of theatre and dance and music, as well as the musical theatre program, to combine a clever plot and creative staging with witty lyrics and seductive jazz, while conveying both an homage to and a spoof of the film noir genre.
Event details
Dates: Oct. 23-25, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 26, 2:30 p.m.
Location: Craig Hall Coger Theatre
Tickets: $18 Adults; $16 Students/Seniors; $12 in advance with MSU ID
About the play
Writer Stine has been commissioned to adapt his latest detective story into a screenplay, but soon finds that the movie biz is far from glamorous. The film’s egomaniacal producer/director, Buddy Fidler, demands endless rewrites, with which Stine complies. Then, in addition to compromising his artistic integrity, Stine risks his marriage by becoming involved with Fidler’s secretary.
The plot thickens when Stine’s own creation grows frustrated with his creator’s lack of integrity and challenges him. In classic Hollywood happy-ending style, gumshoe Stone helps author Stine to win back his wife and his self-respect, while also solving the murder case in his own story-within-the-story.