Overview
An adaptation of the play, An Infinite Ache, by David Schulner, LONG STORY SHORT is a two-actor show, with a four-piece band that covers a romance and 50-year marriage in 98 minutes and 17 songs. This musical romance follows what happens when Charles, a nerdy young Jewish guy, falls in love (on a blind date) with Hope, a young Asian-American woman from Los Angeles.
Casting & Production
Casting
Characters:
CHARLES, a 25-year old slightly nebbishy Jewish white guy from the East Coast. The actor who plays him should be able to convincingly play somebody older (in our experience, casting somebody in their 30’s is probably the right call).
HOPE, a worldly and slightly jaded 27-year old born and raised in LA. She has grown up in an upper-middle class family, and has a taste for the slightly finer things. She’s probably a bit out of CHARLES’s league. She has been roped into a blind date with CHARLES and is none too happy about it. In Schulner’s original play, HOPE was either Chinese or a Chinese-Filipino mix. We’re leaving her race open — she could be Asian, Latino, African-American — but there must be an obvious difference in racial heritage between her and CHARLES; a crucial argument hinges on it. If HOPE is not conceivably of Chinese heritage, a few lyrics will have to change, marked in the script with an asterisk (*). See the appendix for some alternates.
Orchestral Information
4 Musicians
Piano/Conductor (Keyboard 1)
Violin
Cello
Drums/Percussion
Credits
LONG STORY SHORT
Book by Brendan Milburn & Valerie Vigoda
Music by Brendan Milburn
Lyrics by Valerie Vigoda
Media
- It's Really Getting Late
- Rocking Chairs
- It Happens In a Moment
- Before Live Like This
- Live Like This
- We Should Get Married
- Bonjour Tristesse
- Fragile as Love
- Crossing the Threshold
- Unpacking the Suitcase
- Hope Moves On
- One Hundredth
- After One Hundreth
- There She Goes
- Market Research
- Knock DownDrag Out
- Empowered
- The Flash Point
- Introductions (Fragile as Love Reprise)
- What Was That?
- Still Love
- Live Like This (Reprise)
- Letting Go
- Last Cue