The Joys of PSF's Three Musketeers

Congratulations to the cast, crew and creative team of The Three Musketeers, which opened last week at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival. I hear audiences are loving it. Here’s a link to some of the reviews.

One of the highlights of the year for me has been working with this terrific group of professionals and friends at PSF on this production. PSF produced Lend Me A Tenor a few years back and I heard it was a really fine production. This time around I got to join the team for opening day of rehearsals, and the experience has also gave me the opportunity to work with two old friends in new ways.

Director Rick Sordelet and I have known each other for a long while. Up till now, I’ve known him as a fight director – on my musical The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on Broadway and many other projects. This time he’s doing the directing, and he’s done a remarkable job. At Rick’s suggestion, I’ve made a few changes in the text of the play – I’ve even added a new scene for d’Artagnan and Constance, which I’m hoping to add to the Samuel French script going forward.

Rick has assembled a wonderfully talented team of actors and designers for the show, including one of my best friends in the theater, Ian Merrill Peaks, who plays Athos. I directed Ian as Sherlock Holmes in the world premiere reading of Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery at Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival, and he’s about to play the role full-on at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia – and on tour – this winter. In the spring I saw his performance as Timon in Timon of Athens at the Folger Theatre and it was – no hype here, just the truth – jaw-droppingly great. He’s one of the major actors in the American theatre and it’s a thrill to be working with him again.I’m very grateful to the entire PSF team for their dedicated work on The Three Musketeers, and I can’t wait to see everyone again in an few weeks when I head up north to see the show.