The producers of First Wives Club: The Musical this morning announced their leading ladies for the show's spring Chicago tryout. Tony winner Faith Prince, Chicago's own Christine Sherrill and Wicked's Carmen Cusack will be Brenda, Elise and Annie—the roles played in the 1996 film by Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton, respectively.
Prince won the 1992 Tony for best actress in a musical for the revival of Guys and Dolls, playing Miss Adelaide opposite Nathan Lane's Nathan Detroit. She's been nominated twice since, for Bells Are Ringing in 2001 and A Catered Affair in 2008. Sherrill, who won last year's Jeff Award for best actress in a musical playing Norma Desmond in Drury Lane's Sunset Boulevard, was most recently seen as Fraulein Kost in Marriott's Cabaret. Cusack, a Jeff nominee in the same category last year for her role as Dot/Marie in Chicago Shakespeare Theater's Sunday in the Park With George, was among those to play Elphaba in the Chicago production of Wicked as well as on tour.
The new musical, with a book by Designing Women's Linda Bloodworth Thomason and a mix of new and existing songs by Motown legends Holland-Dozier-Holland, is set to play the Oriental Theatre February 17–March 29, ahead of a hoped-for Broadway premiere sometime in the 2015–16 season. Priscilla Queen of the Desert's Simon Phillips is set to direct.