Complete casting has been announced for Drury Lane Theatre's premiere of Hazel, a new musical based on the ’60s sitcom and the Saturday Evening Post cartoons that came before it.
Directed and choreographed by Joshua Bergasse, the choreographer of the recent Broadway productions of On the Town and Gigi, Hazel will star the previously announced Klea Blackhurst as the titular supermaid; Ken Clark (Drury Lane's Camelot; Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 Off Broadway) and Summer Naomi Smart (currently starring in Far from Heaven at Porchlight Music Theatre) will be Hazel's employers, George and Dorothy Baxter.
Other principals include Casey Lyons as young Harold Baxter and a quartet of goofily named characters unfamiliar from the television show: Ava Morse as Benedetta Bomicino, Rowan Moxley as Reuben Steuben, Davu Smith as Scotty Ferber and Ed Kross as Bonkers Johnson.
Completing the ensemble are Bill Bannon, Johnson Brock, Courtney Cerny, Brian M. Duncan, Rhett Guter, Terrance Martin, Tyler Martin, Shari Mocheit, Megan Murphy, Kristen Noonan, Gerard Salvador, and Holly Stauder. The show, with a book by sitcom vet Lissa Levin and score by Ron Abel and Chuck Steffan, is set in the 1960s and seems likely to send up the era's attitudes about gender roles, as the Baxters hire Hazel so Dorothy can take a job. Hazel runs March 31–May 29 at Drury Lane; the theater's current production of Bye Bye Birdie continues through March 13.
