The Ballad of Little JoA musical: music by Mike Reid; Libretto by Sarah Schlesinger; based
on the film by Maggi Greenwald. Director: Carol Metcalfe The cast - Kieran Brown, Mark Carroll, Karen Evans, Anna Francolini, Gavin James, Abigail Langham, Jason Lee Scot, Ellen O'Grady, Audrey Palmer, Craig Pinder, Daniel Reeves, Phong Truong, William Wolfe Hogan The American premiere at Steppenwoolf Theatre was nominated for eight Jefferson awards, including Best New Work and Best Musical Production. Grammy winner Mike Reid has written 21 number one songs – including Bonnie Raitt’s ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’. Sarah Schlesinger is the Chair of Music Theatre at the Tisch School in New York and won the coveted Edward Kleban Award for Most Promising Lyricist for her early work on The Ballad of Little Jo Original London Cast
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The astonishing true story of Jo Monaghan - a young woman who lived as a man in the silver mines of Idaho in the 1890s.
In the story Jo is really Josephine, the tearaway younger daughter of a Boston judge. By the age of 17, Josephine has had a baby, left home to make her fortune, been robbed, raped and disfigured, and adopted a disguise as a man. Jo has to make her way in harsh world of silver mining, learning how to wield a pickaxe and to cope with the initiation rite of a being contest. Jo hankers after the handsome Jordan who is pursuing Sara, who fancies Jo! But all this is set against the sheer precariousness of staying alive and the rise and fall of the miners' fortunes. The troubles of the Irish miners who have been the subject of prejudice become prejudiced themselves making a local Chinese man their scapegoat when desperate Chinese labourers agree to work the mine for half-pay.
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